


So let's say, I'll come another day

by sophieisgod



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, M/M, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-11 23:35:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophieisgod/pseuds/sophieisgod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn meets Liam in 1999, swinging on the gate in his back yard. Liam meets Zayn in 2010, killing time in McDonald’s on the most important day of his life. They have adventures, conquer the world, and fall in love. A story about fate, timing, free will, wonky genetics, parallel universes, significant tattoos, emotional haircuts, sudden nudity, sex crying, and a Batman t-shirt from HMV. </p><p>Or, in which Zayn is the time traveller’s wife. No spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So let's say, I'll come another day

**Author's Note:**

> Re: warnings, I haven't warned for underage, but there are a few sex scenes featuring a character who is sixteen (of legal age in the UK, where the story is set). Also there's a brief bit of Zayn/Harry and some time travel selfcest stuff, whoops.
> 
> Huge thanks to aragons and curlybeach for birthing this monster with me in an email chain of doom, and then for the many months of smiling and nodding politely while I wailed at them about time travel. Thanks to andzoidberg for an excellently fresh and clear pair of eyes, and above all to the incomparable threeturn, without whom this story would be much, much less <3
> 
> The accompanying mix and art by comradeocean are [over here](http://comradeocean.tumblr.com/post/76419618301/1dbigbang-liam-zayn-so-lets-say-ill-come-another); they're gorgeous and thoughtful and bleepy-bloopy so don't forget to check them out!

**the wind changed the first day that you came through ******

_September 1999 - Zayn is 6, Liam is 25_

He’s only got spellings from school and he’s already looked at those, so Zayn’s mum says he can play in the back yard until it’s time for tea. She’s in the front watching Neighbours with Doniya and the baby, but Zayn still closes the kitchen door quietly behind him and the back door too.

He hops down the back steps and makes it to the bottom of the yard without stepping on any cracks. He opens the gate even though he’s not really supposed to, so he can go round and stand on it from the other side, feet on the bottom rung and holding on to the bars, looking up at the house. He’s _definitely_ not supposed to swing on the gate like this, but he can see in the kitchen in case his mum comes and he needs to jump down.

School’s okay, but it’s not like the summer holidays. Zayn misses watching X-Men in the mornings, there isn’t time now.

“You got something to say to me, Chère?” he says out loud, doing the voice. Gambit’s so cool.

“Gambit’s so cool,” says a voice from behind him. 

Zayn nearly falls off the gate.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump.” There’s a man standing in the alley, leaning against the fence for the field at the end of the row, opposite Zayn’s house. Zayn gets back on the other side of the gate, looks at the man through the bars. He’s wearing a housecoat with flowers on it, like the ones Mrs Khan always has flapping on the line in her back yard two houses up. 

“You don’t know me, do you? Never seen me before?”

Zayn shakes his head. That coat definitely looks like one of Mrs Khan’s; Zayn thinks he probably nicked it.

“So that makes today the eighth of September,” the man says, almost to himself, and adds, “1999,” like he’s checking.

Zayn nods. “Okay,” the man says, and smiles at him, a bit distracted, like when Zayn tries to talk to his mum when she’s making the tea.

His hairy legs are sticking out of the bottom of Mrs Khan’s coat. It looks really silly.

“Okay,” the man says again, “okay.”

And then he says, “Your name’s Zayn, you’re in Year Two, you’ve got a big sister and a little sister, and you really love X-Men.”

Zayn takes a step backwards.

“My name’s Liam,” the man goes on, “and I know it sounds mad, but I’m a time traveller.”

Zayn just stares at him, but the man isn’t finished:

“And in the future, where I’m from, me and you are best mates.”

Zayn doesn’t even really have a best mate in Mrs Morrison’s class yet. How can this strange man be his best mate, and know this stuff about him?

“Zayn? Still with me?” the man – Liam, he said his name was Liam – asks him.

“What you wearing that for?” Zayn says, instead of answering properly.

Liam looks down at himself. “Oh, right! Looks a bit funny, doesn’t it.” It really does. “The thing about being a time traveller is, I never know when I’m going and I can’t bring anything with me, not even clothes. So I have to find things to wear, and things to eat; I get into all sorts of trouble. Adventures, really.”

“What sort of adventures?” Zayn can’t help but ask.

Liam smiles this smile where his eyes go all crinkled up at the corners.

“You’ll see,” he says. “Me and you, we have a lot of adventures.”

Zayn smiles back at that, just a little bit, because it would be so cool to have adventures with a time traveller.

“I know it’s a lot to believe,” Liam says. “Especially because I’ve borrowed this nice lady’s coat and I might not be trustworthy.”

It _is_ a lot to believe. Zayn chews his lip.

“How about this,” says Liam. “I’m going to ask you two really big favours, and when I’m gone, you can decide whether or not you want to do them.”

Zayn doesn’t say anything either way, not yet.

“So if today is the eighth,” Liam says, counting on his fingers, “the next day I’m coming to see you is. . . the twenty-first. That’s not next Tuesday but the Tuesday after. Two Tuesdays away.” He pauses, like to check that Zayn’s keeping up. Zayn’s not a baby, he can count.

“The first favour is, I need you to bring me some clothes, doesn’t matter what. Maybe something to eat if you can get it, but the important thing is something to wear, so I don’t have to pinch things off some nice lady’s washing line. And then the other thing is a bit of paper, something to write with. You can leave them on the field, by the old goalpost. Is that okay?”

“Two Tuesdays away,” Zayn says, just to make sure. He isn’t supposed to go on the field by himself.

“That’s exactly right,” says Liam. “Good man.”

He’s still standing in the alley against the fence, hasn’t moved. He looks a bit younger than Zayn’s dad.

“How old are you?” Zayn asks, curious.

“Well,” Liam says, “somewhere out there –” he waves his hand “– I’m at home with my parents, having my tea, and I’m six, same as you.”

“You’re not six,” Zayn says, with a laugh. “You’re well old.”

“Well spotted,” says Liam, “nothing gets past you,” and Zayn laughs again. “Right nowhere, where I’ve come from, I’m twenty-five.”

Twenty-five seems far away. Zayn can’t imagine being twenty-five.

“Zayn,” Liam says, “Listen, Zayn, I think I’m going in a minute.”

But, Zayn thinks. He wants to know about the adventures. 

“You can watch me disappear if you want. I just go, like, _poof_! Like magic. See for yourself, it’s really cool.”

“I’ve got to go in for my tea,” Zayn says, even though he probably doesn’t yet, even though he wants to wait and see if Liam’s going to disappear right in front of him.

“Okay,” says Liam. “See you, Zayn,” and then he does disappear, he actually vanishes. Zayn hurries to the gate even though he can see through the bars that the housecoat is crumpled up on the ground. He opens the gate again, darts out into the alley to scoop up the coat.

Liam wasn’t lying. It is really cool.

His mum’s in the kitchen when he goes back in, but she doesn’t say anything about Liam so Zayn doesn’t think she saw.

“This was in the garden,” Zayn says, showing her the housecoat. “I think it’s Mrs Khan’s.”

“We can take it round after tea,” his mum says, getting the baby into her chair. “You hungry, love?”

Zayn nods, and his mum says, “Busy day,” and calls Doniya to come and set the table.

***

_February 2000 - Liam is 6, and 18_  


Liam’s not wearing his pyjamas. He’d gone to bed right after his dinner because he was feeling a bit poorly – overexcited, his mum said, after _finally_ getting to see Toy Story 2 – and he’d definitely been wearing his pyjamas then.

He doesn’t know where he is. It’s really dark.

“Dad?” he says. His voice sounds really wobbly. “Daddy? Mummy?”

The lights go on and he sees that he’s back in the cinema, the carpet of the foyer under his feet.

“There you are!”

It’s a boy who says it, much bigger than Liam, with brown curly hair. He’s wearing the uniform for the cinema, the purple polo shirt. He comes round the counter holding another purple top in his hands and he kneels in front of Liam, helps him pull it on. It comes down nearly to Liam’s knees. “I found you one of these,” he says.

“Have you seen my dad?” Liam asks him, and it comes out sounding really small.

“He’s at home,” the boy says, “don’t worry. Do you want some popcorn?”

Liam nods, and the boy lifts him up onto the counter to watch while he rummages underneath.

“What’s your name?” Liam asks, kicking his heels.

“It’s Liam,” the boy says, emerging with a bag of Butterkist. 

Liam gasps. “Me too!”

They high-five, and then the grown-up Liam opens the popcorn. Liam takes a big handful; it’s toffee-flavoured, his favourite. He’s never been in the cinema when it’s closed.

“Can we put Toy Story 2 on again?”

“I don’t actually know how to make it play,” the big Liam says, “I don’t work here. Hey, Liam.” 

Liam says, “Liam,” back, because it’s funny that they have the same name.

“Guess what?”

“What,” says Liam, chomping.

“I’m a time traveller.”

A bit of popcorn falls out of Liam’s mouth.

“Guess what else,” he says. “You’re a time traveller, too.”

***

_April 2002 - Zayn is 9, Liam is 22_  


“They’re doing swimming lessons at school.”

“What’s that, love?” his mum says.

“Swimming lessons,” Zayn says. “Three pound a week.”

His mum doesn’t say anything, just sort of nods, but not the sort of nodding like saying yes.

“I didn’t think you were bothered about swimming,” she says, and Zayn wasn’t, but it seems like the sort of thing that might be useful on adventures. He’s not going to say that to his mum, though. It’d be too much like telling her about Liam.

“I thought instead of pocket money,” he says. “Or I could do the washing up.”

His mum flicks suds at him. “Oh you could, could you?”

“Yup.” He can’t think of how else to ask her, and the time’s getting – he might be –

“We’ll see what your dad thinks, alright love?” She smiles at him, though.

“Alright,” he says. “Can I play out?”

“Half an hour,” his mum says, and Zayn legs it out the front door. Round the corner into the side alley, down to the gate and onto the field, through the long grass towards the goalpost.

Liam’s there already, he sees as he gets nearer, not surprised – because it’s a Liam Day, and every day that’s been on the list, Liam’s been there. Today he’s wearing a t-shirt and jeans that Zayn pinched out of the laundry basket in his mum and dad’s room; sometimes the stuff he takes for Liam is a bit mucky, but Liam never says anything about it. Once, for a laugh, Zayn gave him one of his mum’s skirts, but Liam didn’t say anything about that either, just sat there in the grass wearing it, calm as anything.

Zayn thinks about sneaking up on him, but the long grass is always so rustle-y, it makes too much noise. He’s never managed it yet. He slows to a walk, waves when Liam sees him.

As he reaches the goalpost, Liam tips his head back so Zayn can see his birthmark, and Zayn makes a beeping noise and pretends to scan it. “Hmm,” he says. “All clear.”

“Phew,” says Liam. Zayn plonks down in the grass next to him.

“How’s school?” Liam always asks about school. Sometimes Zayn brings his homework to the field and Liam tests him on his spellings, flips through his exercise books.

“I’ve already done all my spelling tests,” is what Liam says if Zayn moans about it, but when Zayn asks what he got he always says, “No comment.”

“We’re doing Goodnight Mister Tom,” Zayn says now. “It’s sad, but I like it.”

“I remember that one!” Liam says. “About the, erm, evacuee. Is that what they’re called?”

Zayn nods, says, “Yeah, in the war.”

“I always liked the bit with his birthday. Where they knit him a balaclava.”

“And the art things,” Zayn says, and Liam smiles at him.

“Yeah, he was good at drawing, wasn’t he? Just like you.”

Zayn feels so chuffed, when Liam says that, and it makes him a bit bold. Liam won’t tell Zayn about the future, but maybe it’s okay to ask about the past.

“What were you like when you were at school?” Almost straight away Zayn feels like it was a weird thing to have asked, so he adds quickly, “What did you like, I mean.”

Liam doesn’t seem to think it’s strange, smiling at Zayn with his hands around his knees.

“I liked running. Kept me out of trouble, very handy for a time traveller.”

Zayn’s not that fussed on PE. Sometimes him and Liam have races, but only stupid ones round the goalposts where they hop or can only jump with their feet together, and it never matters who wins because somebody usually falls over.

Zayn thinks about the things he likes and the things Liam likes, what they have in common, why they’re friends. He couldn’t say why exactly he feels anxious about it, because Liam comes here, doesn’t he, and why would he come here if he wasn’t Zayn’s mate?

Liam being good at PE might be part of the reason Zayn wants those swimming lessons.

But then Liam says, “I liked music best of all, though,” and suddenly Zayn isn’t worried at all.

***

_May 2002 - Liam is 8_  


“A _mild_ case of time travel?” Liam’s dad says. He doesn’t sound very impressed. Liam shifts uncomfortably in his chair.

“I know it hardly seems like it now,” says the doctor, “but the severity of Liam’s condition really isn’t. . . It could be much worse.”

“How could it be worse?” Liam’s mum asks. Liam hopes she isn’t going to cry again.

The doctor looks down at the folder in front of him, clears his throat. “His, um, _episodes_ , they’re relatively short, an hour or two at most. And he seems to gravitate to familiar places, the family home and such, he’s not out wandering the streets.”

“He’s _eight_ ,” his mum says, and she does start crying then. Liam’s dad reaches across and squeezes her hand. “What can we be doing to control it?” he asks.

“Exercise seems to help,” says the doctor. “Drink lots of water, get lots of sleep. Try not to watch too much television.” He pauses. “And if you considered gene therapy. . . It’s still quite an experimental treatment, but the results we’ve been seeing in America –”

“None of that,” Liam’s dad says, and he tells Liam to go and wait outside for a minute.

Liam sits on a chair in the corridor and looks at his trainers, thinking about that word ‘gravitate’ until his parents come out of the doctor’s office.

In the backseat of the car, Liam says, “I’m sorry,” and his dad says, “You haven’t done anything wrong, son.” His mum’s still crying.

Thursday evening, his dad drives him out to the athletics track and signs him up with a running club.

***

_June 2005 - Zayn is 12, Liam is 28_  


“I just don’t get why you’re so obsessed with Batman. I mean, you basically _are_ one of the X-Men.”

It’s a genetic mutation, Chrono-Displacement Disorder. Zayn looked it up on the computers at school. It’s so weird, how this thing is in medical journals and on Wikipedia and everything, but if he hadn’t known Liam he’d never even have heard of it. Liam says the government don’t really want too many people clocking on; Liam himself is vague about some of it, the way he always says ‘jump’ instead of ‘time travel’. Like anyone would hear him here.

Liam just lies back in the grass, hands behind his head, looking smug. He’s already made Zayn promise he’ll go and see the new Batman film the day it comes out. “You wait, mate. Give it, ooh, a week –” pretending to check his watch, like a total loser, god – “and you’ll understand. You’ll be sorry you ever doubted me.”

“If it’s crap,” Zayn says, “you have to give me my money back.”

“Done.” A beat. “You’d have to lend it me, though. Can’t bring anything with me when I jump, can I?”

Zayn rips up a handful of grass and chucks it at his face. Liam doesn’t fight back (Liam never fights back), just brushes it off, and eventually Zayn flops down to his back beside him.

They’re quiet for a while, letting the long warm Sunday afternoon drift over them. That’s one of the best things about Liam: Zayn never feels like he has to talk just to say something.

He’s got something to say now, though. He squints over at Liam.

“We’re moving schools in September. Me and Doniya.”

“Yeah?” Liam doesn’t move, not even to look at him. Zayn looks back up at the sky. And then Liam says:

“I got bullied at school. Really badly, like. Have I told you that yet?”

Zayn shakes his head, then says, “No,” in case Liam still has his eyes closed.

“Older kids, mostly. Some boys I played basketball with. And like, it wasn’t just that I was bullied. I didn’t have any friends at all, really. Not at school. Yeah, I, for one birthday I had this party, at the bowling, and nobody came. And it was shit. Horrible.” He lets out a long breath. “So it’s good, you moving schools. It’ll be better.”

“I’d have been your friend,” Zayn says. “I would, Liam.”

“I know you would,” Liam says, and he does roll over and look at Zayn then. “I mean, you did. You _are_. S’one of my favourite things, actually – almost as soon as I met you, it felt like you were looking out for me, like you cared if I was okay. Always had my back.” 

The way Liam talks sometimes, it makes Zayn feel. Bigger than himself, and smaller, too. But Liam doesn’t sound like he’s waiting for Zayn to grow up into this amazing person who’ll be his best mate, it’s more – it’s like he thinks Zayn’s already there.

The thing about Batman is it’s all his choice. Nobody messed up his DNA; he’s just a man. The thing about Batman is he’s mostly on his own, and Zayn doesn’t think there’s a special school for people who time travel.

He can’t stand to think about it, Liam having a party that no one showed up to, Liam struggling through school with no one to do his homework with. Liam out there somewhere right now the same age as Zayn, alone and miserable. It’s stuck in his throat, what he wants to say to Liam.

“When’s your birthday?” he says instead.

“August,” Liam says.

“When in August?”

Liam opens one eye. “Twenty-ninth,” he says. “Nosy.” He’s weirdly strict about Zayn trying to find him in the present. He says everything will happen the way it’s supposed to and Zayn shouldn’t get ahead of himself.

Zayn scoffs. “It’s not like I’m gonna send you a card.” He’s going to remember though. He’s going to think about Liam on his birthday, and that has to count for something.

“Hmm,” says Liam, and strokes his beard, all suspicious like.

***

_January 2006 - Liam is 12_  


It’s the same group of Year Eleven lads that were at him before Christmas.

He barely makes it into the changing room, door swinging wildly behind him as he slams through, and he can hear them behind him –

And he’s jumping, place after place, too quickly, barely enough time to register where he is: the kitchen at home; the track; the garden of some big house he doesn’t recognise; a field with rusty goalposts standing at one end.

And then he’s back. It must be hours later: the lights are off, changing room deserted.

His bag’s been tipped out all over the floor. His uniform’s gone. He finds it stuffed into one of the toilets.

He walks home in bits of other people’s old PE kit he takes out of lost property, singing under his breath because they took his MP3 player. He tells his mum he had an accident in Food Tech when she catches him trying to use the washing machine.

***

_March 2006 – Zayn is 13, Liam is 23_

It’s been six months since the last time he saw Liam, the biggest gap he can remember. And it’s not that Zayn’s worried he won’t turn up, because there hasn’t been a date on the list that Liam’s missed, but he carries this anxiety around with him the whole week leading up to it, staring at the day marked in his planner instead of paying attention in class.

The weird feeling melts away as soon as Zayn gets to the field and Liam high-fives him; he can’t even remember why he was so worked up. It’s easy as anything to sit in the grass together, Liam grinning as Zayn tells him about the school musical.

“That’s fantastic, I love Grease.”

“They made an extra part, so I could be a T-Bird. Me and this other lad.”

“Did you have jackets?”

“Yeah,” says Zayn. The jackets were so fucking cool. “Yeah, they had the logo on the back and everything.”

“Oh man, I wish I’d seen it.” Liam nudges him. “I bet your mum has a video.”

Of course Zayn’s mum has a video. “Fuck off,” he mumbles.

Liam claps his hands. “Right! Show us the dance, then.”

“I’m not doing it,” Zayn says, embarrassed. There’s no way he’s dancing in front of Liam. “Do you not have better things to do than come here and wind me up?”

“This is important,” Liam says seriously, “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.” Then he breaks and says, “Maybe you’re destined to be a genius dancer and I’m the one that’s supposed to help you overcome your fear, did you ever think of that?”

“Fuck _off_ ,” Zayn repeats, putting up a hand to hide his grin.

“Nope,” says Liam, “get up, we’re doing it, come on,” and Zayn lets himself be pulled to his feet.

“Have you got your phone? If you put your phone in a bowl or something it, like, amplifies it so you don’t even need speakers.”

“I don’t have music on my phone,” Zayn says. “And I’ve not got a bowl on me either, you weirdo. Why would I have a bowl? I’ve got my iPod, though.”

“That’ll work,” says Liam, and they take an earbud each. Zayn hits play, the Nelly album he was listening to on the way home from school coming through the headphones.

“Oh, nice,” Liam says, nodding, and then he starts doing this exaggerated step-touch, just side to side, gradually getting bigger and sillier and pumping his arms while Zayn stands there laughing at him.

“Come on!” Liam switches to the Greased Lightning dance, waggling his head obnoxiously until Zayn huffs and joins in, and it’s so stupid, their arms crossing over each other. They have to stay close because of the cord and they keep bumping into each other but Zayn doesn’t care, he’s wheezing laughing and he doesn’t care, because he hasn’t seen Liam for six months and now he’s here.

He closes his eyes and just moves, not giving a shit about what he looks like, not giving a shit about anything except the music in his ear and Liam moving with him.

And then Liam jumps and Zayn staggers, one earbud suddenly dangling useless.

***

_April 2007 - Liam is 13_  


Liam’s not supposed to stress out about things, but trials for the Olympics are a big deal. Anyone would get worked up about something like that.

He feels cold, standing on the start line, not right at all.

Everyone goes off too fast and he does too, knows it almost immediately but there’s nothing he can do; if he backs off he’ll be out of it and that’ll be that.

He’s chasing a boy in a Liverpool Harriers vest, and he kicks and kicks but he can’t catch him, a fraction of a stride off his pace.

Liam’s lungs are burning burning burning all the way round the track but it’s not good enough, in the end he’s not good enough. When it’s finished he thinks he might throw up, but he doesn’t, and that probably means he could have pushed harder.

Afterwards, they sit in the car, Liam’s spike bag a dead weight in his lap.

“I think singing,” he says, and his dad says, “Let’s do it.”

***

_May 2008 - Zayn is 15, Liam is 19_

Zayn’s drawn a Bat-signal in his homework planner on every Liam Day since he started high school, is the thing, and The Dark Knight will be out in a few months so there’s already stuff in all the shops, stuff that makes him think of Liam. Once he’s had the idea, he doesn’t want to wait for a sale.

It makes sense to have things that are just for Liam, so he’s not scrabbling around in the laundry every time to find him some clothes. Zayn’s stuff is mostly still too small for Liam to wear, and he doesn’t want to keep giving Liam his dad’s clothes, because it’s weird, he just doesn’t.

He goes to HMV and he finds the t-shirt and he pays full price for it, and then he has to wait three weeks with it burning a hole in the bottom of his wardrobe.

So it’s funny, when he sees Liam wearing it, that it isn’t even the first thing he notices.

Liam’s hair is the shortest Zayn’s ever seen it, and it makes him look – not tougher, not like he’s trying to be hard. Sad, Zayn thinks suddenly.

“You found the top, then,” he says, because Liam’s just staring at him, hasn’t even said hello. He’s got big dark circles under his eyes. He must be really knackered, because all he says is, “Zayn?” squinting up at Zayn like the sun’s behind him.

“You expecting someone else?”

Zayn can’t help the smile on his face, the good feeling just at seeing Liam again. He drops down into the grass close beside him, because why the fuck not, when he feels like this.

“Your hair looks good,” Zayn says, taking out his pack of cigs. It takes a few goes for his cheap lighter to spark, but it does eventually, and he takes his time with his first drag. It’s not like he thinks he has to look cool in front of Liam, but. “Proper hard, like.”

“You shouldn’t smoke, you know,” Liam says, like he always does, like it’s a reflex – and then he says, “It’s not good for your voice,” which is new.

Apart from his family, Liam’s the only one that Zayn’s talked to about singing, about how it makes him feel; Liam talking about his voice like it’s something important, that’s. A lot.

Zayn bumps him with his shoulder. “Alright, dad.” And maybe Liam’s having a quarter-life crisis or something, doesn’t appreciate being older, because he actually asks Zayn for one of his cigarettes.

“What’s up with you today,” Zayn says, handing it over. “You’re being weird.”

“Sorry,” Liam says. He leans in for a light. “Just, strange day.”

“No spoilers,” Zayn says, sarky about it like he isn’t always dying to know what Liam’s doing, where he’s coming from.

“What,” Liam says, and stops. “What date is it?”

“Now he asks,” says Zayn. “2008. May. Twenty-eighth.” Zayn is fifteen, will be sixteen in eight months. When he’s sixteen, he’s hoping –

“Right,” says Liam, and they finish their cigarettes.

Eventually Zayn can’t help himself, has to know:

“What d’you think of the top then?”

“It’s Batman,” Liam says, glancing down, like he hadn’t even noticed, and Zayn feels like a fucking idiot.

“Right,” he says, and looks away, biting the inside of his cheek. After a minute he tries to play it off: “I just thought it’d be nice for you to have something of your own, when you come. I can probably still take it back if you don’t want it. It’s not a big thing, like.”

He makes himself look back at Liam, and Liam looks suddenly upset.

“No, it’s great. It’s _Batman_ , seriously, Zayn. It’s great to see you,” he says, massively earnest and not making much sense, making the knot inside Zayn unravel right away.

“Alright,” Zayn says helplessly. “Calm down, knobhead.” He’s got this urge to take Liam by the chin, smile right up in his face until his eyes crinkle, kiss him. He really wants to kiss him.

Instead he reaches out, rubs Liam’s head, and Liam leans into it; the bristles feel nice against Zayn’s palm, surprisingly soft.

And even though Liam doesn’t seem quite himself, it’s like the gap between them, those years Liam has on him – it’s smaller than it’s been before.

“You really like it?” he can’t help but ask, and Liam leans back to look at him again.

“I love it,” he says. “Come here,” and he pulls Zayn in for a hug, this huge hug that feels like the best sort of exhale.

“It’s just a t-shirt,” Zayn says, hiding his grin in the shop-smelling fabric, the hint of Liam underneath.

This can’t be the first time Liam’s hugged him. It must have happened before, but right now Zayn can’t think when, because Liam’s holding him really tight, hugging him like he _loves_ him, properly loves him.

That night, Zayn puts the Batman t-shirt back in the bottom of his wardrobe so he doesn’t do anything weird to it, and then he lies in bed, thinking about Liam’s arms, Liam’s hands on him.

***

_August 2008 - Liam is 14, and 7_  


It’s not lying, that’s what his dad says. They put it on the form, they put ‘CDD,’ and if nobody cares enough to look it up that’s not their fault.

Liam hasn’t been on a plane since he was five and now he’s flying to _Barbados_.

“It’ll be fine,” his dad says, and it is. He has prescription sleeping pills so he takes those for the flight and he doesn’t jump, he doesn’t jump and he wakes up on a beautiful island.

They film him a lot, rehearsing and doing his hair and running on the beach in just his trunks. They film everyone, really, but it’s still a bit of a thrill, thinking about what they might do with the footage, if they’d use it as part of a package about his journey if he makes it to the live shows.

It doesn’t matter in the end, because Liam doesn’t make it to live shows. They tell him he’s too young, and Dermot hugs him, and he tries to stay in the present, tries not to cry too much on telly.

He makes it through another flight, and he doesn’t sing along with the car radio on the way back from the airport. Finally, his dad pulls up to the house, and they sit in the driveway for a long moment.

He spoke to his mum before they got on the plane, got it out through the lump in his throat, but he still doesn’t want to go in and see her and his sisters, isn’t quite ready for the pity on their faces.

“Get a bit more experience,” his dad says, “get school out of the way, and then we’ll come back and smash it.”

“Yeah,” he says, and they go inside.

There’s a small Liam sitting at the table eating chicken nuggets and peas. He looks about seven; his mum always fusses, especially when they’re that young.

The girls ruffle Liam’s hair and sort of pat him reassuringly, and his mum hugs him tightly and says, “Oh, sweetheart.” She doesn’t even cry. She just says, “Do you want to talk about it?” and he’d thought it would hurt more but it’s actually fine; it takes some of the pressure off, having the small him here, big-eyed and shovelling peas, and Liam finds there actually are things he wants to talk about: how nice the weather was and how mental the whole production circus is and how he wants to learn to surf.

“Don’t be listening, you,” Liam says before he gets into it, mock-stern, and the little one puts his hands over his ears and grins at him.

“I love the little ones,” Ruth says after he’s gone. “They’re so cute.”

“This one’s not so bad either,” Nic says, pinching Liam’s cheeks, and he squirms away from her but it’s still sort of nice. Anyway, one day he’ll come back and be older than both of them. He swipes a chicken nugget off the abandoned plate, still warm.

***

_March 2009 - Zayn is 16_  


He watches Donnie Darko and it really fucks him up.

Liam always says there’s only one way things happen, that you can’t change your past or your future no matter how much you meddle with it, but Zayn can’t stop thinking about it, about knocking things off course somehow.

Liam always says they’re best mates but Zayn wants to kiss him, thinks about it all the time; so now he’s wondering if maybe that’s something, like maybe Zayn will kiss Liam and then they’ll be two versions of themselves, the Liam-and-Zayn that are best mates and the Zayn-and-Liam that kiss, like he could split the universe with wanting something. Like maybe Zayn will kiss Liam and then they won’t be anything at all, they won’t even know each other.

Zayn doesn’t know anything about Liam’s life, not really, nothing about whatever it is Liam does when he’s not dossing about in a field in Bradford.

There’s only a handful of dates left on the list. He’s never seen Liam older than about thirty.

Anyway.

***

_April 2009 - Liam is 15, and 25_

It’s a working mens’ club tonight, and it actually goes pretty well. Liam does his set, and nobody boos him, and some of them even clap when he’s finished. 

After he’s sung, when he’s in the gents splashing his face with cold water, he peers at himself in the mirror over the grotty sink. Brown hair, brown eyes. He leans right in, until his forehead’s practically touching the manky glass, and he – 

He doesn’t set off any alarms, which is one less thing to worry about, but he’s still naked in some random house. Some really rich person’s random house, from the looks of it. The room he’s in is massive and open-plan, like the foyer of a really posh hotel; there’s couches, and a big staircase, and a painting that takes up most of one wall, and best of all a gorgeous grand piano. Liam trails a hand over the glossy black lid of it, skin practically tingling at the way it feels. 

He puts on a hoodie that’s folded over the back of the couch, tugs it down as much as he can; his dick’s still out but it’s better than nothing. Nobody’s come to investigate the noise he made clattering about, anyway, so he figures he’s safe for now, drifts back to the piano. 

Feeling bold, he presses a key, and then another, plays a simple arpeggio, holding the notes until the clear sound fades away. It’s a really nice piano. 

There’s a noise from upstairs, and someone calls, “Is that you, Li?” Liam sits down hard on the piano bench. Whoever lives here, they know his name. 

He’s about to dive for a cushion to cover his bits when the front door opens, and it’s, it’s _him_ – him older, looking like he’s just coming in from a run, and he doesn’t see Liam straight away, shouts “Babe, I’m back,” as he toes off his trainers. 

Liam tries to subtly wipe off the piano bench with his sleeve before he clears his throat. The other him just about manages to hold back a laugh when he sees him. 

“Look what the cat dragged in,” he says, and strides over to pull Liam in for a hug, actually ruffles his hair before he lets him go. “Do you want some pants?” 

“That’d be good, thanks,” Liam says. “Do I _live_ here?” 

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” the older version of himself says, smirking a bit, and normally Liam’s not one to beg for spoilers, but he’s never been _here_ before, this huge fancy house that might be his. 

“Oh, come on,” he starts, but the other him just says, “I’ll grab you those pants,” and heads up the stairs. “Babe,” he shouts as he’s going, “come and see who I’ve found –” 

And then Liam’s back, breathless in the club toilets, and there’s only one car left in the car park. 

“Anywhere exciting?” his dad asks, as he locks up and posts the keys through the door. 

Liam thinks about it. “Not sure yet.” The nights are getting warmer. He grins. “I’ll let you know.” 

***

_July 2009 - Zayn is 16, Liam is 22_  


The first Saturday of the summer holidays, his family drive across to Salford to see some cousins.

Zayn gets out of it.

“You sure you’ll be alright on your own, love?” his mum says, pulling her cardigan on in the hall.

“Just feel sick,” he says, and tries to look it. “I’m gonna try and sleep it off, I think.”

“I’m so sure,” Doniya says, before their mum steers her out the door.

He stands on the front step to watch them drive away, Waliyha and Safaa waving out the back window. He gives it five minutes, in case one of the girls forgot something and made his dad turn the car around, then he legs it upstairs to put some proper clothes on.

When he gets to the edge of the field he sees Liam stand up, like he’s been watching for him. It makes him jog a little bit faster.

“Everyone’s gone out,” Zayn says when he reaches him, breathless. “Do you want to come up to the house?”

It’s almost more than Zayn can deal with, Liam in his room, Liam touching his things. Zayn had thought that they’d sit around downstairs, maybe put on a DVD, just do something _normal_ for a change, pretend to be ordinary friends. He hadn’t prepared himself for _this_ , that Liam would want to look at his stupid room, all the stupid things on his walls.

Liam’s looking at the bits of art he’s put up, the stuff he’d done for his coursework that he’d liked too much to put in his portfolio. The assigned theme was ‘My World,’ which was cheesy as fuck, but Zayn had got kind of into it, getting this big book of Islamic art out of the library to copy some of the patterns, drawing big scratchy letters that were supposed to look like graffiti. He’d even done a couple of pictures that were sort of about Liam, the goalpost and the field; Zayn keeps those in the bottom of the wardrobe with the Batman t-shirt.

“This is really cool,” Liam tells him, “I really like it. I really like your room.”

He’s so earnest, Zayn has to make this scoffing sound to cover up how pleased he is. “It’s not much, like.”

Liam shakes his head at him. “When I was your age, I still had bunny rabbit curtains.”

Zayn gets that ache again, thinking of where Liam is in the present, if anyone’s in his room, touching his things.

“What,” says Liam when he catches him staring, and then he stretches his neck so Zayn can see his birthmark, their old joke. “Satisfied I’m me?”

“Identity theft is on the rise,” Zayn manages. “Don’t tell anyone your PIN number.”

Liam crinkles at him, and Zayn smiles back helplessly, this bubble of happiness in his throat.

“I always wanted to see what your room was like growing up. Never saw it when you lived here.”

There’s plenty of reasons why Zayn might not live here anymore. He might have met Liam at uni. He might have a place of his own. He might finally have bought his family a house, a better house than this one. It doesn’t have to mean –

He can’t stop himself asking, though. “Are we, like, housemates?”

Liam gives him that look, the _no spoilers_ look. “We see a lot of each other, let’s put it like that.”

Zayn’s stomach full-on swoops at that: at Liam, really; at the space he takes up here, in Zayn’s room. In Zayn’s life.

Liam sits down on the edge of the bed, and Zayn silently thanks his mum for the sheets clean on yesterday.

“So how’s school?” Liam asks, because Liam always asks.

It feels like there’s about three things happening at once, Zayn’s mixing it all up: girls he’s had up here, the way their hands clenched in his duvet, the way Liam’s leaning back on his hands while he waits for Zayn’s answer. It’s a bit too real, suddenly.

“School’s school,” Zayn says. “I’m going to get some tea, do you want anything?”

“I’d love a cuppa.”

“Sugar?”

“Yeah, a lot,” Liam says, looking a bit embarrassed. “Like five.”

“Gross,” Zayn says, and leaves Liam sitting on the bed, heading down the stairs before he does something stupid, like kiss him, or drop to the floor between where Liam’s knees are angled open. Zayn’s never sucked anyone off before. He takes a minute in the kitchen, breathing deep with both hands on the table while the kettle boils.

He’s stirring Liam’s sugar in when he hears it, the faint sounds of music from upstairs that must mean Liam’s found his cheap little CD player. He grins at the idea, Liam sorting through his albums to find something to put on, maybe dancing by himself up there in Zayn’s room. Five sugars, for fuck’s sake. You couldn’t make it up, Zayn thinks, putting the mugs on a tray with some digestives he found in the cupboard and a couple of packets of crisps.

He nudges his bedroom door open with his shoulder, ready to dig at Liam for picking, like, the most obvious Usher album, but. The jeans and Batman t-shirt are on top of the covers, Usher still going on like he doesn’t grasp that there’s no one there anymore, that Zayn is –

He didn’t even get to see him go.

When his family get back, it’s dark outside, but Zayn hasn’t even bothered to close his curtains. He’s just left the tray on the floor by his wardrobe, tea gone stone cold.

“Mum says are you feeling better,” Safaa says, hanging off his doorhandle.

“No,” Zayn says, and pulls the duvet up over his head.

***

_August 2009 - Liam is 16 (just), and 19_  


He goes up to his room as soon as they get home from the bowling, his parents watching him anxiously. He knows he should force a smile and kiss them goodnight and say thank you, but the thing is his throat is so tight that if he tries to talk to them he’ll just –

He closes the door, locks it, leans his forehead against the wood. “Fucking, shit,” he says quietly.

“Worst birthday. Absolute worst.”

Liam turns to see himself sitting on the bed, himself in a few years by the looks of it. The other him offers a shrug. “Next year’s better, if it helps.”

It doesn’t, really, right now, but Liam appreciates the gesture. “Spoilers,” he says, and goes to sit next to himself on the bed.

“Where are you coming from?”

“2012. Autumn-ish.” He looks tired, his hair cut very short. Liam reaches out to rub his palm over the bristles of it, gently back and forth until he catches Liam’s hand and says, “Oi.” He’s smiling, though, so Liam just sighs and settles against his shoulder, lets himself be pulled in tight.

“They still did the cake and everything,” he says finally. That had been maybe the worst part of it, how they’d tried to pretend they were still having a good time, even though he could see his mum swallowing tears.

“You know what they’re like,” the other, older, him says, and Liam says, “Yeah.” He still feels a bit like he’s going to cry. It’s shit.

“Didn’t get you a present,” he hears. He doesn’t want to move, so he just says, “Rude,” and then the other him says, “How about I make it up to you.”

Liam looks up at that. He looks up at himself, who’s biting his lip like – like –

“How d’you mean,” Liam says, and it comes out a bit hoarse, nervous. The other him says, “C’mere, just,” and it’s not quite a surprise, the kiss, and it’s light, but for Liam it feels so – new.

He pulls back after a second and says, “Okay?” frowning like he really wants to make sure, and Liam nods quickly, kissing him back so fast he probably makes a mess of it.

He doesn’t stop, though. He parts his lips slowly and Liam opens his mouth, too, and then he’s tipping them over, sorting it so Liam’s on his back on the bed. Liam spreads his legs on instinct so he can settle between them, and Yeah, Liam thinks, like that. God.

Liam’s not done this before, and it’s so good. To have someone touch him. He seems so much bigger than Liam is, built through the shoulders and arms. It’s a weird comfort, separate somehow from the relief of being pressed down to the bed, the grounding weight of it, of not having to think about this day anymore: this will be him one day. He’ll work for something, and it’ll pay off, and he’ll look like this, be strong like this.

No one’s ever touched him like this before. He kisses Liam’s throat, slides his hands up Liam’s top, which is – Liam doesn’t want to make noise, definitely doesn’t want his parents to come up and check on him, so he clings to his back even as he can’t help shoving his hips up, bites his own lips to keep the sound in.

“Do you want,” he says at last, hands at the bottom of Liam’s t-shirt, and Liam scrambles off the bed to strip, shoving his trousers and pants and everything off as well as his top because he feels like he’s about to come out of his skin.

He stands there for a moment while the him on the bed just looks, then wets his lips, reaches out to pull Liam closer by the hip.

“Can I?” His eyes are dark, and something about him seems as desperate as Liam feels.

“Yeah, yes,” Liam gasps, wanting it, whatever it is, and he’s pulled down to the bed again.

Liam arches up for more kissing and gets it, and it’s so good, it feels so unbelievably good. There’s nothing else to care about, nothing he has to worry about when the older him is kissing his way down Liam’s body, making his belly tremble.

There’s no teasing, no messing about: Liam covers his own mouth while his other self holds his hips down and sucks, and sucks. It’s so slow, and it builds and builds until Liam comes with a sob, heels sliding in the sheets. He swallows, god, pulls off and crawls back up the bed to wrap his arms around Liam.

“That’s it, that’s better,” he says, stroking up and down Liam’s back, and Liam snuggles closer, because there’s nothing to be embarrassed about, is there, if it’s just him.

“Hey,” Liam says eventually, nudging. “If it’s my birthday, is it your birthday too?”

“Dunno,” he says, and sighs, his chest rising and falling under Liam’s cheek. “Doesn’t much feel like it.” 

“Hey,” Liam says again, and rubs at his hip, where he’s still narrow enough to fit into Liam’s basketball shorts. Liam rubs back and forth with his thumb, says into the skin at the base of his throat, “It can be your birthday,” and he lets Liam wank him off, then. Liam’s never had anyone else’s dick in his hand, so it’s a bit clumsy, but Liam knows what he likes.

Lying there after, Liam feels lighter, wiped clean. “Thanks,” he says. The hand scratching gently at his scalp stills for a second; he hears, “You’d do the same for me,” and it makes him grin helplessly, in spite of everything.

“We should go down and see them,” Liam says. “In a bit,” he says, and they lie there, holding on.

***

_November 2009 - Zayn is 16, Liam is 24_  


It’s the last date on the list, the last searchlight in his planner. The last Liam Day.

Zayn finishes college early on Thursdays and he doesn’t even bother going home to dump his bag, just goes straight to the field. Liam isn’t there yet, and Zayn decides that’s good, he hasn’t missed a minute of it. He settles in by the goalpost to wait.

By the time Liam gets there it’s almost dark, the sky heavy. For once, Zayn doesn’t even try to pretend not to watch as he dresses, takes in the lines of him, his muscles, his bare back. Jeans, Batman t-shirt, hoodie. When he straightens up, Zayn feels it like an ache.

“It’s Bonfire Night,” he says, before Liam can ask. “2009, I’m sixteen. There’s fireworks on at the other park, but I got sparklers.” Well. He’d sent Danny to get them, and Danny had given him this look, like, we’re talking about this later, but Zayn doesn’t give a fuck. It won’t matter later, will it, what he tells Danny.

He lights them with his lighter and for once Liam doesn’t fuss about it, doesn’t get on at him about smoking. He accepts his sparkler eagerly, looking so excited, like a kid, and Zayn can’t tell if he knows this is the last time. Liam must know, he’s the one who gave Zayn the list, but he isn’t talking about it, isn’t acting like everything’s about to change.

Zayn’s got a pack of ten and they just work through it, Zayn lighting two at a time and neither of them saying anything, just lighting each other up against the sky.

Before his last sparkler burns out Liam draws a Z in the air like Zorro, grinning at Zayn over the dying sparks of it, and Zayn sort of wants to cry so he just comes out and says it:

“I’m not gonna see you after this, am I?”

Liam looks at him clear and steady, just says, “Zayn.”

Zayn takes Liam’s burnt-out sparkler from him, chucks it with his own, not caring where they land. He puts his hand on Liam’s cheek.

“Can I?” he says, and Liam nods.

Zayn kisses him. Liam kisses him back. Zayn tries to pay attention to everything, but it’s so much, how full Liam’s lips are and the raspy press of his stubble against Zayn’s skin, and then Liam opens his mouth, just a little bit, just enough, and all the months Zayn’s spent worrying about this moment just fall away.

It’s so easy, the way Liam kisses Zayn, like he knows him, what he likes, the way Liam’s hand comes up to cup his jaw, tilting him slightly so the angle’s absolutely fucking perfect.

The kiss breaks, but neither of them move away, lips hovering a breath from each other for a long, gorgeous moment. Liam draws in this shaky breath and Zayn thinks he’s going to jump so he clenches his fists in the hoodie Liam’s wearing, holds on. Don’t you dare, he thinks, and Liam grins like he said it out loud, kisses him again.

Zayn gets his hands under Liam’s hoodie, under the t-shirt, against his warm, warm skin. He chases the way it makes Liam shiver, working his fingers under Liam’s waistband because if this is the last time he wants it all, anything he can get.

“Zayn,” Liam says, against his mouth. “Zayn, wait. Wait.” He does pull back, then, and Zayn can’t be doing with that. 

“I don’t want to wait, there won’t be another –” He pushes his mouth against Liam’s again, pushes his body against Liam’s again. Liam groans into the kiss, and Zayn doesn’t know it’s the good kind of groan until he feels Liam’s arm go tight around his waist. They’re properly snogging now, every slide of Liam’s tongue against his making Zayn crazy, like he’s not ever going to get enough of this.

The noises of the two of them together seem so loud, so much more important than the pop of fireworks far away. Zayn presses his palm against Liam’s dick through his jeans, squeezes.

“Wait,” Liam says again, “no, Zayn.” He takes half a step back, angles his hips away like Zayn didn’t just feel him getting hard. He clears his throat, takes a second before he looks Zayn in the eye. “Not now, just. When we – it should be the first time for both of us.”

“It’s not my first time,” Zayn says, staring him down.

Liam makes this little frustrated noise as he shakes his head, and even though he’s not trying to be, he’s so sexy. Fuck, his mouth’s all wet. Zayn wants him so much.

“I don’t mean that. I mean. . . Together, like. At the same time. Do you get what I’m saying?”

Zayn does get it. He understands it for the almost-promise it is, and so he lets Liam wrap his arms around him, lets himself be held with his face tucked into the curve of Liam’s neck.

How is he supposed to go into college tomorrow, now that he knows what this feels like?

“I just wanted,” he says, eyes still closed.

“I know,” Liam says, “I know, babe.”

Zayn wants to say, What about the adventures, but the words feel thick in his throat. He can’t bring himself to voice it, thinks it’ll sound like a little kid, and he just. . .

He can say some of it, at least, if this is the last time.

“I love you,” he says, the breath of his words rebounding warm off Liam’s throat. “Did you know that?”

Liam just nods, doesn’t argue. He’s so warm.

“Just really love you,” Zayn says again. “Gonna miss you.”

He kisses Liam’s throat, right on the birthmark. And maybe he should be looking at Liam for this next bit, but he can’t bring himself to pull away, even that far.

“Thanks,” he says. “Thanks, y’know?”

Liam holds him tighter. “Don’t go looking for it, alright? It’ll happen. You’ll know when.” His voice is gruff. He kisses Zayn clumsy on the eyebrow, and then he’s gone.

***

**what if we hadn’t been each other at the same time**

_June 2010 - Liam is 16_  


His face is sore from smiling for hours afterwards. All the way home in the car, four yeses and Simon standing up for him, his parents so proud.

They get fish and chips to celebrate, his mum squeezing him even as they stand in the queue.

“You’re going to do it,” she says, eyes still a bit misty behind her glasses. “You’re really going to do it.”

***

_July 2010 - Zayn is 17_  


“I told you so!” His mum keeps laughing. “Oh, well done, sweetheart.”

Zayn still hasn’t really processed it, the whole day a blur since his mum dragged him up and bundled him in the car, no argument. He sang on a stage and people thought it was okay and he’s going to be on X Factor. Fuck.

“Was it worth getting out of bed for, then?” she teases. “You can pay me back when you’re rich and famous, buy me a really nice alarm clock.”

“Yeah, alright. Calm down.”

“I told you,” his mum says again, and he smiles out of the window all the way back to Bradford.

***

_July 2010 - Liam is 16_  


The guy he’s sharing with is Irish, and he brought his guitar. Liam’s been so focused on bootcamp that he hasn’t even thought to worry about having a roommate, about the possibility of jumping, freaking out and someone seeing. To be fair, though, time travel wouldn’t be most people’s first explanation for Liam being a weirdo. Maybe if he gets lucky, they’ll think he’s a magician. Liam thinks Dynamo is pretty sick.

Niall is sixteen like Liam, and he’s from nowhere Liam’s heard of, and he hasn’t stopped talking since they got in the room. 

“What’d you sing for your audition then?”

It takes Liam a second to catch up and realise he’s being asked a question. “Oh,” he says, “Cry Me A River.” He feels compelled to add, “Michael Bublé, not Justin Timberlake. Not that I don’t like Justin Timberlake.”

Niall whistles. “Big song.”

Liam can’t exactly agree with him, not without sounding like a show-off, so he asks, “How about you?”

“Did Ne-Yo, So Sick. Don’t reckon they thought I was that great at singing, like, but apparently I’m _likeable_. Got a bit of _charisma_.” He waggles his eyebrows.

Liam’s suddenly worried, because for all that he’s worked to get this far, all his focus on singing and performing and practising winking in the mirror, you either have the X factor or you don’t, it’s not something you can put the hours in for. It’s no use being able to sing if nobody likes you. If people think you’re a freak. There’s literally nothing he can do about it now, though, so he asks Niall, “What else do you like?”

“Anything. Everything.”

He’s not lying, reels off a list: Bublé and The Eagles and Bon Jovi and Robbie and Justin Bieber, all the way through to the Backstreet Boys, Busted and McFly and Westlife.

“Excuse you,” says Niall, catching the look that must be on Liam’s face at that. “I’m a proud Irishman, course I love Westlife.”

“Right,” says Liam. “It’s just, boybands.” If things were different for Liam, maybe he’d be more into the boyband thing, but when he sees one on the telly it makes him feel a bit weird, like he’s jealous of something he’ll never be able to have. Better to think of other things.

“Love a boyband, me,” Niall says. “If I wasn’t doing this I’d be well up for it, round up some mates maybe. Practice standing up for the key change.” He executes an admittedly very impressive airgrab.

“And then when you break up,” Liam says, getting into it, “you can do your Swing When You’re Winning. Sorted.”

“You joke,” says Niall, “but that’d be so sick.”

“Hah,” Liam says. “Like your audition.”

Niall points at him. “Exactly.”

That night, Liam shifts on his side so he’s facing Niall’s bed, and says, “I know I should sleep, but I feel like it’s Christmas Eve or something.”

Niall snorts companionably. “Mate, I’m fucking buzzing. I just wanna get out there tomorrow, get it done.”

Maybe being in a group would be alright, if he was with someone like Niall.

In the morning, they head down to the lobby together, hours too early.

“Big day,” Niall says, clapping him on the shoulder. “Gonna have a wander before it kicks off proper, see the sights. Good luck, though.”

“You too,” Liam says, meaning it.

He knows the next few days are make or break, knows he should be preparing physically as well as mentally, but he still finds himself ducking into the first McDonald’s he sees.

There’s a guy about his age staring up at the breakfast menu, and Liam steps up beside him. He reckons he must be here for bootcamp, same as Liam, and Niall’s probably made ten new friends already, so he says, “Has to be the Egg McMuffin, surely.”

“It is a classic,” the guy agrees, and then he looks at Liam. He’s really – _pretty_ , with this dark hair, and eyelashes, which is a weird thing to think, so Liam shakes it off.

Neither of them have said anything else, and it’s probably Liam’s turn to talk, but the guy’s still looking at him, frowning, like maybe he watched the X Factor when Liam was on it before, which would be a bit embarrassing. This time’s going to be different, though. Liam’s got a good feeling about the whole thing.

***

_July 2010 - Zayn is 17, Liam is 16_  


At first he can’t do anything but stare. It’s early enough that Zayn might not be properly awake, might not be seeing what he thinks he’s seeing. Who he thinks he’s seeing.

Liam is standing in front of him, looking right at him, and he’s _young_. Zayn’s age, like he always said. His hair is lying straight across his forehead, no curl to it at all. Zayn can’t think. He blinks into the bright McDonald’s lights.

Liam’s still looking at him like he’s trying to work something out, and then Zayn sees him shake it off, and he says brightly, “Bootcamp, yeah?”

Zayn gets it together enough to nod. He has to cough before he can ask, “You come far?”

“I’m from Wolverhampton,” Liam says, and Zayn never knew that.

“Bradford,” he says back, and it comes out almost sounding normal. “I’m Zayn.”

“Liam,” says Liam, so this is happening, it’s actually happening. “Liam Payne.” He holds out his hand like it’s something he thinks he’s supposed to do, and he smiles properly when Zayn takes it. Liam Payne from Wolverhampton. He’s here. Fucking hell.

They eat their breakfast then walk across to sign in together, Zayn’s head buzzing all the way.

As soon as they’re through check-in Liam gets pounced on by this whooping Irish kid with bleached hair; he gives Liam a massive hug, slaps his palm, and dashes off to do the same to someone else on the other side of the room.

“That’s Niall,” Liam says, looking a bit flustered. “We’re sharing a room.”

They fall into another one of those silences, where Zayn just stares at Liam and Liam doesn’t say anything either.

“I need to do some, um, breathing exercises,” Liam says finally, but not like he actually wants Zayn to go away, just like he really needs to do some breathing exercises. “But – see you later?”

Zayn nods, says, “Good luck, yeah,” and lets him go. Liam looks back, once, as he walks away.

Zayn moves through that first day in a daze, sings his Michael Jackson song like they want him to, and it goes okay, he thinks, but he can’t think about anything other than Liam, Liam being _here_. And the thing with Liam being here is that Liam can _sing_. Zayn’s heard him sing before, they’ve sung together, but that wasn’t at all the same as seeing Liam up on that stage, selling the hell out of it like he’s been doing it all his life.

At the end, they line everyone up, drag it out, but they call his name, and they call Liam’s, and they’re through, they’re through to the next day.

The guy Zayn was sharing a room with didn’t make the cut, so if Zayn spends the whole night tossing and turning on his scratchy Travelodge sheets, at least there aren’t any witnesses.

The dancing is a nightmare.

Zayn can’t do it, there’s just no way.

It’s not even that it’s hard, the steps they want him to do, it’s doing them up on that stage with people watching. Zayn can’t stop thinking about all those times he danced with Liam, on the field, sharing earphones and messing around and not giving a shit what he looked like.

So he bottles it, sits backstage feeling like a twat until Simon bloody Cowell comes with cameras to talk him into it. And Zayn goes, because if this is his chance with Liam he can’t fuck it up by being a chicken.

He gets through it, and when he’s filing off afterwards Liam reaches out to clap his shoulder, whispers, “Well done, mate.” Zayn thinks he might be sick.

So it’s not a surprise, after that, when he gets cut, but he still feels it like a kick to the stomach. They cut Liam, too, and that _is_ a surprise.

Liam looks devastated, he’s crying and getting a hug off Dermot and everything. They’re filming Liam’s roommate too, Niall, and _he’s_ crying, and everyone who didn’t make it is still just hanging round like nobody knows where they’re supposed to go from here.

They’re all going to go home, Zayn thinks numbly. Everyone’s going to go home, and he should find Liam, only what the fuck is he supposed to say? Like, I know you’re a time traveller and I think you’re my best friend and I love you, please don’t go. Please don’t go again.

Liam Payne, Wolverhampton. Zayn has to hold onto that because he knows him now, he could find him on Facebook, but they’re rounding everyone up again, all red-eyed and sniffling, and the cameras are out, and Zayn just doesn’t look at anyone, just looks at the floor.

They call his name.

And then they call Liam’s.

***

_July 2010 - Liam is 16, Zayn is 17_

They call five boys back, and Liam’s one of them.

They urge them back to the stage, Liam and Niall and Zayn from McDonalds who didn’t want to dance, and Harry with the beanie and another boy with a hat, Liam thinks his name might be Lewis. None of them know why they’re being brought back, but Liam can see them all getting hopeful round the edges, can feel himself doing it, too. Calm down, he thinks. Don’t jump.

Nicole from the Pussycat Dolls is telling them they’re too talented to let go, and then Simon’s telling them they’re through to Judges’ Houses, and everyone’s jumping on each other and yelling, and Liam’s so stunned it feels like his face might fall off. A _band_. He’d never thought.

They line up again, all clinging tight to each other. Liam’s got Niall and Zayn on either side of him, and he can’t help thinking about how they might all work together, because Niall can play the guitar and he’s got a bit of _charisma_ , and Zayn might not dance but his voice is great and he’s got those eyelashes. Maybe they can be a boyband that doesn’t dance. Would they be allowed to do that?

Liam has to stop getting carried away and start getting serious, because there’s no way he can be in a band without someone finding out about the CDD, and that’s, he can’t. He’s going to tell them that he needs some time to think about it, and then in a little while he’s going to tell them no.

It’s the X Factor, though. He might not get another chance.

Niall and Harry and Louis, it’s Louis, they’re chattering away excitedly, talking over each other and falling all over each other, but Zayn’s still off a little to one side, looking about as mixed-up as Liam feels.

Zayn shifts when he sees Liam coming over, wraps his arms a bit tighter around himself.

Liam makes a bit of a face at him. “What do you reckon?”

“Dunno,” Zayn says. “I never thought about being in a boyband.”

Liam he doesn’t even know if he _can_ be in this band, but the thought of doing it without Zayn seems somehow wrong. So he bumps their shoulders together, and when Zayn looks at him Liam gives a shrug. “Might be an adventure,” he says, and it must be the right thing to say because it makes Zayn smile at him, smile right at him and say, “Yeah.”

***

_August 2010 - Zayn is 17, Liam is 16_  


“You nervous?”

Zayn stops staring up at the bungalow and looks across at his dad. “Nah,” he says, and his dad smiles like he knows he’s bullshitting. “It’s just lads, innit.”

“Come here, then.” His dad pulls him in to hug him awkwardly over the handbrake, kisses the side of his head.

“See you Sunday,” Zayn says, and gets out of the car.

The door isn’t locked so he just goes in, and they’re all in the kitchen, arguing over pizza toppings. Zayn stands in the doorway, holding his bag and feeling a bit of a knob, until Liam looks up and says, “Zayn’s here.” They all look then, and Niall yells, “Zayn! What shall we put on the pizzas?”

“Chicken,” he says, and then they all pitch in to tell him why he’s wrong.

There’s not a lot of rehearsing goes on, between the pizza and FIFA and Liam and Louis getting ridiculously competitive over a bit of a kickabout. In fact, by the time it’s dark outside and the five of them are sprawled out on the squashy sofas, they still haven’t sung a note. Zayn should probably be more worried about that than he is.

There’s a weird noise from outside, sort of like someone moaning. They stop the ongoing animated discussion about Power Rangers to look at each other, startled, and they hear the noise again.

“I’m not being funny,” says Louis, “but what the fuck was that?”

“Is the door locked?” Niall says, and none of them can remember what they did with the key.

“We should go and look,” Liam says. “Someone might be in trouble.”

He gets up and jogs out into the night, and Zayn barely thinks about it before he’s up too, wrapping a tea towel round a branch, flicking his lighter at it until it takes.

He heads down to the edge of the adjoining field, where Liam stood up on the fence, shouting, “Hello! Do you need any help?” Zayn steps up next to him, trying not to drop his flaming stick; he brandishes it around a bit, trying to throw the light so they can see down the field.

“Did you set that on fire?” Liam says, sounding alarmed. Zayn doesn’t get a chance to answer before they hear the moaning noise again, really close now, and heavy breathing like a bull about to stampede.

“Woah,” Liam says, “maybe we should,” and Zayn says, “Fuck,” and they both leg it back to the bungalow. Liam’s faster, but he doesn’t leave Zayn behind.

Zayn stamps his makeshift torch out on the patio flags and they duck back into the bungalow while the other lads yell at them to hurry up. As soon as they’re inside they all push the coffee table up against the door, drag all the mattresses off the beds and lay them out together, flopping down on top of them to catch their breath.

Niall bursts out laughing. “I don’t know what you thought you were doing,” he says, kicking his leg out at Zayn. “Some proper Indiana Jones shit, I ask you.”

“Mental,” Louis says, but it comes out admiring, and Harry says, “We do actually have torches somewhere, you know. Like, real ones. With batteries,” and Liam rolls over to look at Zayn and smiles, says, “Thanks.”

***

_August 2010 - Liam is 16, Zayn is 17_  


Liam wakes up at half six, and he can’t get back to sleep. It’s nice though, listening to the others breathe, there’s something soothing about it, so he just lies there for a bit, basking. It’s been good, the bungalow, and it’ll be better now Zayn’s here, now it’s the five of them and they can get on with the singing, all together properly.

And Zayn had come after him, last night. Like Indiana Jones, Niall had said.

No one’s ever had Liam’s back like that before. He looks over at Zayn’s head on the pillow beside him; he’s frowning in his sleep a bit, mouth open, and he’s got really long eyelashes –

Liam is standing in a corridor, naked, nowhere he’s been before. Shit. There’s music playing, pumping tinny through overhead speakers, and crowd noise. A concert, then, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find something to wear.

He sets off down the corridor and almost immediately bangs into someone solid coming round the corner.

“Where have you appeared from, then?” The guy doesn’t look angry, sort of – fondly exasperated. Like he’s seen this sort of thing before.

“Um,” Liam says, and chances it. “2010?”

The guy just sighs. “More trouble than you’re worth, you, I don’t know.”

“Sorry?” Liam offers, and the guy says, “Clothes, come on.”

The guy gives him his big jacket to tie around his waist and Liam follows him through the halls, hands cupped self-consciously over his junk.

There’s a rail with his name on (there’s rails with all their names on, and mirrors, this is amazing), so he automatically grabs for the nearest shirt, but the guy shoos him away, says, “Not the costumes, Liam, bloody hell.”

Costumes, Liam thinks with a thrill. _Costumes_ , like they’re properly performing, like they’re important enough to all have rails with their names on.

The guy (Liam should really get his name, would it be weird to ask his name? He sounds Irish, maybe he’s related to Niall) throws him a too-big t-shirt and a pair of shorts.

“Boxers?” Liam asks. 

“Don’t push your luck.”

Everyone sort of leaves him alone after that, not like they’re ignoring him but just like they’re busy; the whole backstage area is buzzing with activity. Liam drifts towards it, casual as he can, desperate to see and trying not to get his hopes up. The noise swells as he nears the stage, louder and louder, his heart thumping almost as hard.

And there he is, another him, pacing back and forth at the front of the stage, talking to the audience, Niall and Harry and Louis squashed together on a sofa, Zayn perched on the arm nearest where Liam’s standing in the wings. The noise is coming off the audience in waves.

God, this isn’t even the X Factor Tour, this is their _own show_.

Liam can’t believe it, almost can’t believe it except for the little whisper in his head about that house, the huge beautiful house with the grand piano he’d have to make it _big_ to be able to afford. He hugs himself, giddy, and Zayn glances across into the wings. He double-takes when he sees Liam, then waves, pulls a face, and Liam raises his hand to wave back –

He lands in the pool with a splash. Water goes up his nose and he flounders for a minute until he gets his bearings, breaks the surface coughing. He thinks about the five of them, up on that big stage with the lights and the screaming fans and ducks under the water again, lets out his laughing disbelief in a big bubble, tucks his knees up and turns over and over, because they’re going to win, they must be. They’re going to work really hard and they’re going to win the X Factor and it’s like this whole massive chunk of his future slots into place, just thinking about it.

When he comes up again the others are coming over, faces scrunched up against the morning. Louis dips his foot in, kicks up a splash.

“Pool party, is it?”

“Are you naked?” Niall says, and Harry starts stripping.

“Nice morning for it,” Zayn says, smirking before he pulls the Batman t-shirt over his head and drops it on a lounger.

“Just seemed the thing to do, lads,” Liam says, and spits a stream of water at the sky as they all bomb in around him.

A few days later, back in Wolverhampton, Liam’s phone lights up.

_HAPPY FUCKING BIRTHDAYYYYY GET DRUNK_

_happy birthday mate, have a corker_

_liam!! happy bday ! yes my son !!_

And then, just before midnight:

_happy birthday bro, hope u had a gr8 day_

***

_September 2010 - Zayn is 17, Liam is 17_  


They have to be at the airport early, all loaded up in the people carrier.

Liam looks anxious as they wait to board. “I get a bit weird about flying,” is all he says, and Zayn wonders how he can manage to fly with the CDD. Zayn doesn’t tell anyone that he’s never been on a plane himself, has only just got a passport. It costs extra, when you have to fast-track it like that.

As soon as they’re in their seats Liam curls up against the window and goes to sleep. Zayn grips the armrests during take-off. He puts his headphones on as soon as he’s allowed, but he can’t stop drumming his fingers and he can tell it’s starting to piss Louis off. He puts his iPod away halfway through the flight and it’s the right thing to do because Louis grins at him sharp, says, “Good, now you can entertain me.” They play slaps the rest of the way, Niall and Harry hanging over the back of their seats to cheer them on.

“You should wake him up,” Louis says, nodding over at Liam when they switch the seatbelt sign back on.

Zayn leans across and lets his hand drop over the other side of the armrest, curls his fingers in the hem of Liam’s t-shirt.

“Liam,” he whispers, then tries it louder. Liam’s eyes open, searching Zayn’s face for a long moment before he realises where he is. Zayn’s never seen him come awake before. He coughs. “We’re nearly there.”

“Right,” Liam says. “Sorry.”

Spain is the warmest place he’s ever been, and he goes in the sea, and the villa is huge, it’s hard to believe it’s all real, that he’s actually on the X Factor.

They don’t sound terrible rehearsing, and they’re better when Louis and his foot come back from the hospital. Zayn feels a bit of a dick singing the echo, but Liam’s singing with his fucking eyes closed so he reckons he can at least make the effort, like.

“Should’ve maybe got a bit more practice in, lads,” Niall says with a nervous giggle, while they’re waiting to perform. Harry looks like he’s going to be sick.

Liam says, “We can do this, we can do this,” over and over, really intense. And as it turns out, they can. 

They sort of collapse on each other, yelling in each other’s faces, and then Harry and Niall peel off to go and fling themselves at Simon Cowell (Simon _fucking_ Cowell, they’re through, they’re going to the live shows) and the rest of them follow, like if they’re too far away from each other the whole thing will fall apart.

They do it again for Dermot and this time’s almost better, even without the initial rush of shock at making it through, Liam’s face in his neck and the five of them facing in on each other with the cameras at their backs, feeling stronger every second.

After all that it feels weird to be going back home tomorrow, so it’s a relief when Louis pulls him aside that night and says, “Let’s fuck off for a bit, yeah, get in some trouble.”

They wander down to a bar on the beach, get a couple of beers. They drag two loungers together on the sand so Louis can prop his foot up, and Zayn smokes. It’s pretty mild, as trouble goes, but it’s exactly what Zayn needs. He can feel himself calming down, chatting with Louis about their sisters and college and what they’ll do when this all falls through.

“I’ve got no idea what I’m doing here,” Zayn admits. “No fucking clue. Like, my mum dragged me out of bed one day and made me audition, and now I’m in a band? How does that happen?”

“I think we’ve just got to have fun with it,” Louis says.

“Yeah, it’s only, what, millions of viewers? Live television?”

“Piece of piss,” says Louis, and they clink bottles.

Zayn goes for another round (Louis pouts and makes out he can’t, his foot still hurts) and they just go on sitting there, gossiping like a couple of mums.

“Niall,” Zayn says, and Louis says, “Irish,” straight away, “twinkle. Leprechaun. No,” when Zayn scoffs at him, “but people love a bit of that, don’t they? Girls and nans and everyone. Good lad, Niall, securing the Irish vote, great forward planning.”

“That settles it then,” says Zayn, “we’re definitely gonna win. Harry?”

“Charmer,” says Louis. “ _Flirt_.”

Zayn snorts. “He was dead good though, wasn’t he? Him and Liam.”

“He’s a strange one,” Louis says thoughtfully. “Liam. It’s like he doesn’t know how to have fun.”

“I think he had a bit of a hard time at school,” Zayn says. “Not many friends, like.”

“Did he say that?” 

Zayn shrugs.

“Yeah, well, I’m not surprised,” Louis says, and softens a bit. “Too busy preparing for total X Factor robot Bieber domination, probably.”

Zayn doesn’t really want to talk any more about Liam, and he’s finished his drink. He nods out at the sea. “Fancy another swim?”

“Fuck off,” says Louis cheerfully.

The next day, going home, there’s bit of a scuffle as they all hug goodbye at the airport, everyone making sure to hug everyone else individually and then all five of them piling in. Liam’s slightly awkward about it but he still does it, and he’s smiling, and Zayn starts to think they might pull this off after all.

***

_October 2010 - Liam is 17, Zayn is 17_  


Liam has a game plan. It’s not complicated.

He’s going to work really hard, be as professional as he can be, give it his absolute all every week, 110%.

There’s not going to be any distractions. He’s not going to be the weirdo thinking about his bandmate’s eyelashes instead of focusing on the competition. He’s not going to be the time-travelling freak pulling focus.

Which means –

He can tell them after. When they win.

It’s two months. He can keep it from them for two months.

***

_October 2010 - Zayn is 17, Liam is 17_  


A list:

1\. Liam straightens his hair. And like, Zayn had grasped that, but it’s so weird, actually watching him do it.

2\. Liam’s good at keeping a secret. He still hasn’t said anything to them about the CDD, and none of the others seem to have guessed anything’s wrong; they just think Liam’s a bit uptight.

3\. The live shows are huge. It’s so loud in the studio with the audience and the lights are really bright, and people scream for them, it makes no sense that this is Zayn’s life now.

4\. He has no idea how he’d do this without the other boys. Not just Liam, either, Zayn wants to go all the way just so they can all stay together. It’s mad, having mates like this.

5\. Zayn’s been sleeping in the Batman t-shirt, because – because he doesn’t know why, like he’s trying to jog Liam’s memory. It feels a bit like cheating, like trying to force something, and it’s stupid anyway, because Liam can’t remember, can he. It hasn’t happened to him yet.

***

_November 2010 - Liam is 17, Zayn is 17_  


All Louis says is, “Chill out, Liam,” but it’s the voice he uses when Liam’s not being funny enough in the video diaries. Liam hates that voice.

Liam wants to argue with him, because it’s important, how the fuck are they going to win the X Factor when they can’t even keep in time? They have to start taking this seriously, and Liam opens his mouth to say so, but he’s – he’s all hot and prickly on the back of his neck, in the way that never means anything good, so he just stands up, walks out of the rehearsal room without looking at any of them and straight up the stairs, tripping on one so that he nearly falls down. 

He barely makes it back to their pigsty of a room before he jumps, and he doesn’t even go home so he can have a nice sugary cup of tea and a hug off his mum, it’s some bloody field he’s never seen before, all overgrown like the council can’t be arsed to look after it. He tries to do chin-ups on the rusty goalpost to kill the time but it just hurts his hands, and he can’t even kick at it because he hasn’t got any shoes, and then it starts _raining_ and –

He’s back in the X Factor house, back in their horrible tiny smelly room and it’s like something in him just breaks. He starts messing up his bed, snatches up the pillow and whacks it against the post of the bunk as hard as he can, over and over, putting his whole body into it.

He starts knocking stuff down from the other bunks, anything and everything in reach, just to fuck something up. And he’s still naked, suddenly gulping these shameful sobs, and it’s just like being back at fucking school, he fucking hates it.

“Liam?”

He spins around and Zayn’s standing in the doorway, shock on his face; at the sight of him, Liam drops the pillow he’s still got hold of and just sort of folds up, and Zayn catches him.

He doesn’t say anything about Liam crying, or being wet from the rain, or not wearing any clothes. All he says is, “You’re alright,” over and over, a hand at the back of Liam’s head.

“I hate this room,” Liam says finally. He needs to blow his nose.

“Yeah, it’s a tip,” Zayn says, easing Liam back so he can look at him.

Zayn’s hand is on his face and it feels so nice that Liam leans into it, sways towards him without thinking. Zayn blinks, and oh, Liam could slap himself. He must look – because Zayn lets his hand fall.

“Better?”

Liam nods, tries to pull himself together. “I should tidy up.”

Zayn surveys the damage. “It basically looks the same as it did before,” he says with this little smile. “We can leave it for now, it’ll keep.”

Liam needs to find some clothes to put on, because he’s still bloody naked. He scrambles into some pants, not even caring who they belong to, then scoops up a bundle that’s probably a t-shirt, shakes it out.

“You can wear that if you want.”

Liam looks down when Zayn says it; he’s holding the Batman t-shirt that Zayn sleeps in sometimes. Liam just stares at it in his hand for a moment and then turns to pick up his own clothes.

“Come on then,” Zayn says gently, “band meeting.”

Zayn waits while Liam gets dressed and then walks with him back to the rehearsal room. Liam pauses outside the door. Zayn puts his hand on Liam’s back, and Liam takes a deep breath and steps back in.

“There he is!” Niall says, like nothing happened, like Liam didn’t rush out of the room before like a complete freak.

What Liam wants to say is, We’re going to win this, I’ve seen it, and, We’re not going to win this if we don’t work hard for it, but all he comes out with is, “Sorry.”

Louis leans forward across the table. “There’s no point doing this if we’re all miserable. We’ll crack up if we don’t have any fun, Liam.” He doesn’t say it like he’s having a go, and Liam relaxes enough to nod.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to win, though,” Harry says. “We’ve got to fucking go for it, haven’t we?”

That’s what Liam has to focus on. Going for it, working hard. He just has to get through a few more weeks, because they can’t kick him out of the band if they win. “I don’t want to go home,” he says.

***

_December 2010 - Zayn is 17, Liam is 17_  


Zayn goes home.

It’s like his life’s been on fast forward, these past few months, and it’s not until he comes home that he realises. Sitting in the front room with his mum and his sisters and everyone, it all stops flashing past him, gives him just a minute to breathe, time resettled and reset for this short space.

His granddad dies, and Zayn goes home, and Liam texts him the whole time.

He expects Liam to talk about rehearsals, keep him up to speed with what’s happening on the show, but he barely mentions it. He asks how Zayn is, and he asks about his family, and what it’s like at home, and Zayn gladly answers questions he answered years ago just to keep Liam talking, because he knows Liam isn’t like this with the others.

It’s not like Zayn spends the whole funeral thinking about Liam, but he spends three days sitting in his nana’s lounge with his phone vibrating against his thigh, and all of it feels like home.

“Thanks for coming back, love,” his mum says the last day before he goes back to London, and Zayn says, “Don’t be daft,” awkwardly putting the lid back on a tupperware half-full of chicken tikka.

“We’re so proud of you,” she says, “and your granddad, too, he was so proud,” and all he can do is hug her, let her cry into his shoulder a little bit while they stand there in the kitchen.

He checks his phone that night and there’s a message that just says: _i miss u loads_

Fuck.

Zayn has no idea how Liam can give himself away like that, how for all that he’s hiding the biggest thing he’s so painfully open about this. He texts back,

_miss u 2_

and it feels like the smallest gesture he can make.

Whatever happened to Liam when he was at school, he’s grown this protective shell around the hurt, he doesn’t let people in; but for Zayn, it cracks so easily, and that’s a good thing, surely that has to be a good thing. Everything that’s happening to them is so strange, but Zayn can take care of Liam and Zayn can give him this, can tell him the truth about this.

_miss u_

In his old strange safe bed he thinks, even if they don’t win and they don’t get signed, even if the band breaks up, he’s still found Liam. They’ve found each other now.

***

_December 2010 - Liam is 17, Zayn is 17_  


They come third.

Liam doesn’t understand it. He’d been _so sure_ – and they’d all worked so hard, and it’s all been for nothing, his whole shining future's disappeared.

He’s surprised he doesn’t jump there and then, on the stage in front of the cameras, millions of people watching, everything he’s wanted slipping away, but there’s Harry’s arm around his shoulders, Zayn’s voice saying how they’re going to keep going together, and somehow he stays inside himself.

All night long he doesn’t jump, not even through seeing their parents, and having to be at the afterparty with Matt and everyone else, and then all of them in a back office talking about a contract, faces a bit mucky from crying. Not when it’s the five of them, stumbling out in disbelief.

“Lads,” he starts, and his voice cracks, and it’s been such a long night, but he has to tell them, can’t let them tie themselves to him when they don’t _know_ –

He must look like he’s about to have a breakdown, because Zayn catches his eye, shakes his head, says low, “Leave it for now, mate, just leave it,” and Liam gives in and nods, too exhausted to think about it any more.

***

_January 2011 - Zayn is 17_  


It’s just getting light when Zayn wakes up, sprawled out on the floor in some random bedroom, Danny’s arm dangling down off the bed. He drinks some water straight out of the tap in the kitchen and lets himself out.

The streets home are empty, and Zayn hugs the morning to himself, breathes it in and trudges back the long way, across the field, mist low over the wet grass.

He tries to look at it objectively.

Liam’s still just a kid, really. A Liam that’s younger than Zayn is, that doesn’t know everything there is to know about him – that’s different than the Liam Zayn grew up with. This Liam hadn’t guarded himself against the possibility that they wouldn’t win, not really, he hadn’t been ready for it.

Zayn thinks about his face and heart all broken open, and he has no idea what this Liam wants from him. He thinks about that day Liam trashed their room in the X Factor house, when Zayn found him naked and crying and hurting, and he knows he has to be careful with him. He knows he’s being selfish, too.

Liam was going to tell them after the final, and Zayn had stopped him.

The thing is, if they talk about the time travel then they have to talk about all of it, how there’s a future version of Liam that Zayn’s in love with. The two things are so knotted up in each other, Zayn has no idea where to start untangling them, and he has no idea how Liam would react if he told him.

The thing is, right now, Liam doesn’t need someone to be in love with him. He needs someone to be his friend.

Zayn hasn’t crossed this field in a year and a half, and it’s not like Liam ever promised him anything, not really.

Best mates. Adventures.

He can do that.

***

_February 2011 - Liam is 17, Zayn is 18_  


The others are still down in the bar, because Niall will talk to everyone until last orders and beyond, and because Harry’s still claiming birthday privileges and Louis’ humouring him, but Zayn and Liam are up in their room.

Liam likes it when he gets to share with Zayn, because he doesn’t make a fuss about Liam being boring, and if he stays in too then they can just lie around chatting about superheroes and music and their families or whatever. Also, it’s _Zayn_.

The thing about sharing with Zayn, though, is that some nights – tonight, for example – Zayn comes out of the bathroom in just a towel and catches him staring, and Liam has to cough hurriedly and think of an excuse.

“Sorry, I was just.” He taps his own collarbone. “Your tattoo.”

“Do you not approve?”

There’s a twist to Zayn’s face when he says it, and Liam doesn’t know if it’s because of the Arabic, if someone said something to him, but he can’t stand the idea of someone making Zayn feel bad about it. 

“I think it’s lovely,” he says honestly. “Because it’s part of him and part of you, like both sides of you. I think it’s really lovely.” 

Zayn’s quiet, and Liam feels suddenly like a bit of an idiot. It’s still – having mates, actual friends he can talk to, he’s still working out what the rules are.

He feels so guilty about the one huge thing he’s not telling them (because there’s the tour, and they’re recording, and there hasn’t been a moment, and Liam’s a _coward_ ) that he wants to be as honest as he can about everything else. Which apparently means being creepy about Zayn’s tattoo for his dead granddad.

“Anyway. Sorry.”

“No, it’s,” Zayn says. He swallows. “Thanks.”

And Liam knows he means it, just from the way his voice sounds. All he can do is nod, wrapping his arms around his knees and trying to hold in the way he wants to tell Zayn the truth about himself more than he’s ever wanted to tell anybody.

***

_March 2011 - Zayn is 18, Liam is 17_  


It’s easier than he thinks it’ll be, finding somewhere in the warren of the arena to sit and read his book, just for half an hour. He’s been wanting to read The Beach for ages, has been snatching pages whenever he gets the chance, and it’s good to get stuck in; Ms Rafferty had said he’d like it, said it was like Lord of the Flies only with more hippies.

“Oh, there you are!”

Liam’s leaning round the doorway, and Zayn has been gone for maybe twenty minutes, but that’s honestly more than he gets most days on this tour, so he doesn’t really want to get pissy about it. Plus, it’s. Liam.

“Soundcheck?” he says, shutting his book.

“Nah, we’ve got a while yet.” Liam’s still hovering, though, so Zayn shoves up on the couch, makes room for Liam to plonk himself down.

“What you reading?”

Zayn angles his book so Liam can see the cover.

“What’s it about?”

“Well,” Zayn deadpans, “there’s this beach. . .”

Liam laughs and says, “Right, got it,” and then waits patiently for Zayn to explain the rest, so he does, gives him the gist right up to where he is now, the parallel universe thing.

“Okay so, I don’t really understand the science of it–”

“I’m crap at science,” Liam puts in, nudging him a bit, and yeah, Zayn knows that; a different version of Liam used to try and to help him with his physics coursework, would usually give up and throw pencils at him. Only he can’t say that, can he, so instead he smiles back, says “Yeah, me too,” and then, “Oh, right,” when he remembers he’s supposed to keep talking.

“So I don’t really care about the science, but the idea is that there’s, like, an infinite number of parallel universes, sitting alongside this one. And if there’s an infinite number of them, there’s infinite possibilities of how things turn out. So then literally anything you can think of, it must be happening in one of them, yeah?”

“Huh,” says Liam, sitting up straighter. “It could be anything at all?”

“Anything,” says Zayn. “Stupid things, like if everyone had an extra ear in the middle of their face, or proper things, like, I dunno, like if Hitler won the war. And then everything could be different in that universe because of that one thing.”

“Wow,” says Liam, “that’s so cool. Okay, so somewhere out there, dinosaurs still exist and the world is basically just like Jurassic Park.”

“Or somewhere out there _we’re_ the dinosaurs,” counters Zayn. “Trying to hold our mics with our little T-rex hands.”

“Dancing’d probably be about the same,” says Liam, face all scrunched up in a smile like – like – fuck, Zayn’s been trying really hard not to do this. No more lists, no more comparing. He’s not going to be thinking about other Liams when there’s a Liam right here with him now, it’s not fair on anyone. He takes a deep breath, says, “Go on, your go.”

“We are One Direction: Britain’s next big girl band,” and that’s a good one, Zayn thinks, spluttering laughing at the idea of them all in slinky dresses and lipgloss and cheerleader outfits or whatever.

“Everyone has beards. Literally everyone. Even babies.”

“Everything is made out of Lego.”

“The five us were killed by the cow murderer at the bungalow and now we’re all ghosts.”

“Erm, the sun is failing so we’re all living underground like mole people.”

“What?” laughs Zayn.

“In warrens,” Liam insists.

Imagine a universe where people can travel in time, Zayn wants to say. Fuck, he should have just let Liam tell them all after the final, like Zayn could tell he wanted to. Like Zayn sometimes thinks he wants to even now. “Somewhere I’m Batman,” he says instead, just to fuck with Liam a bit. Liam is predictably outraged, and they slam into each other with their shoulders until Zayn’s bum slides half off the couch and Liam hauls him back up.

“Well done, good game, good game,” says Liam, shaking Zayn’s hand like after a match. It’s so silly. “Makes you think, though.” 

“What, about mole people?”

“I’m always thinking about mole people, Zayn,” Liam says, straight-faced. “No, but. Say there’s a universe where we all grew up together, the five of us. Like we all lived in the same town or something.”

“Well, Niall wouldn’t be Irish. Or maybe we’d all be Irish, I dunno.”

“No, but I mean –” Liam huffs out a breath. “Imagine being around someone like Louis your whole life. It’d change you, yeah? I mean, it’s only been, what, six months? Seven? And I’ve changed already, I know I have, because of the lot of you. Imagine if I’d known you when I was young and impressionable.” He nudges Zayn, and god, he’s been over and over it but this is the time, this is absolutely the time for Zayn to tell him. 

Liam, I know about you. 

Liam, I’ve known about you since I was six years old. 

Liam, when I try to untangle the ways you’ve changed my life it makes me want to throw up a bit. 

“It’d be so different. Don’t you think?” Liam’s waiting for him, smile prompting.

“It’d be an adventure,” Zayn says, chest tight.

“Exactly,” Liam beams, and really, fuck everything.

***

_April 2011 - Liam is 17_  


“Liam! Drinks!” Louis shouts, and Liam says, “Nah,” like he always does, only this time Louis’ face goes tight and furious, and he doesn’t talk to Liam the rest of the ride back to the hotel. When they get out of the van he grabs Liam’s wrist and marches him straight through the lobby, into the lifts and then down the hall and into the room he’s sharing with Harry.

“Right,” Louis says as soon as the door’s swung closed behind them. “I have had just about e-fucking-nough of this.”

“I don’t drink,” Liam says blankly, “you know I don’t drink.”

“That is _not_ what I’m talking about,” Louis says, and Liam has a bad feeling about where this is going. “I don’t give a shit if you drink or not, god. But you never come out with us, you won’t play video games, you’re always running out of rooms like we’ve got the bloody plague –” 

Like today, between shows, when he’d been dizzy, thought he was going to jump, so he went and found a corner in the warren backstage and did star jumps, ran on the spot until he felt safe in his own skin – 

“– and I thought we were past this, Liam, I thought we were mates. Fuck.”

Liam feels cold all over.

“And I know it’s a job and you want to work hard, be professional, but. It doesn’t work like that, we’re not just some people that you work with. We’re not just along for the ride. D’you get that? Like, do you care at all?” Louis shakes Liam’s arm, where he still has him by the wrist. “Where’s your bracelet, Liam? I’ve never seen you fucking wear it.”

They’ve all got these matching bracelets, given them by the label, and the rest of the lads wear theirs all the time, but Liam can’t wear his, doesn’t wear any jewellery at all because if he jumped he’d lose it. He’s got it in a box in his bedside table at home, for safekeeping.

“You’re my best mates,” Liam says desperately, “the best mates I’ve ever had, but I –”

But he still can’t tell them. Can he?

“What?” Louis finally lets go of his wrist, exasperated. “What is it?”

It’s stuck in his throat.

“I’m not messing, Liam. You can tell me right now, or you can go fuck yourself.”

And it’s probably a bluff, Liam can see the concern running underneath Louis’ frustration, knows that he probably _wouldn’t_ , but. He’s so tired of hiding from them all. He screws his fists into his eyes and slaps his hands down on his thighs, hard, and then he says, “Right,” and gets out his phone.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Louis says, heavy with sarcasm, “do you have to make a call? Important text, is it? Carry on, don’t let me interrupt you.”

“Hang on,” Liam says, tapping, “just let me load this.”

Deep breath.

“It’s called Chrono-Displacement Disorder.” He holds his phone out steady so Louis can see the Wikipedia article on the screen.

“Basically,” he says, “I’m a time traveller.”

***

_April 2011 - Zayn is 18, Liam is 17_  


In the end it isn’t anything like how he thought it would happen.

He’d thought –

He’d thought there’d be a moment, maybe, when it’d be the right time for him to tell Liam. That he knew, that he knew him before, about it all. Or the other way round, even if Zayn had missed his chance Liam would find him, would jump back to him and work it out for himself, would come back to Zayn in the present and know.

That Liam wouldn’t want to lie to him anymore. That Liam would trust him.

He’d never thought of Liam sitting shy in front of them, Louis beside him, squeezing his leg reassuringly while Liam tells them the most important thing there is and Zayn feels like the bottom of his world’s falling out, wrong wrong wrong.

Niall wants to know if Liam can take them with him and Liam explains the rules, looking at Zayn, darting nervously because he hasn’t said anything yet, so Zayn forces a smile, says, “Wow,” and that must be enough because Liam relaxes straight away.

Zayn feels like shit for being so upset about it, too, because Liam looks like he’s had the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders, properly smiling his creased-face smile, even as the others prod at him. Zayn’s never seen this Liam lit up like that, not since he met him in the present.

“It is on Wikipedia,” Harry says, looking up from his phone in surprise.

“Stop _pinching_ , Louis, it doesn’t work like that!”

Zayn finds a tattoo parlour that’ll be open after the show, and then he books a taxi.

He doesn’t want it in his own writing, _definitely_ doesn’t want it in his own writing from when he was six, so he picks a font, something old and heavy-looking, sits there burning while the artist buzzes it into his skin.

And then there it is, the list: seventy-two dates from _8.9.99_ to _5.11.09_ , ten years of his life, and it hurts, and it happened.

Louis smells blood in the water three days later, when Zayn flinches as he grabs at his arm. 

“What’s all this then?”

Zayn sighs and pushes up his sleeve. They crowd round to look at it, the figures running in two black columns down the inside of his forearm, still a bit scabby.

“You’re mad,” Niall says, and Harry looks wistful.

“Is it family stuff?” Liam asks, fingers gentle. “Like birthdays and anniversaries and things?”

“Something like that,” Zayn says, shaking him off, and goes to get really, really drunk.

***

**just put your hand on the past, I’m here trying to pull you through**

_July 2011 - Liam is 17, Zayn is 18_  


“Imagine a universe,” Zayn says, treading water, his legs brushing Liam’s, “where people have gills.”

“Might come in handy,” says Liam.

“Built-in scuba gear, that’d work too.”

“Flippers for feet.” 

Zayn squints a smile at him, water spiked in his eyelashes, and they swim for the shore. They really aren’t too far out, the Malibu coast within easy reach. No big deal, like.

“Was I gone long?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“Shit.”

“S’alright. They’re shooting Harry with one of the girls.”

There’d been a meeting, after the tour. Liam had sat down with his parents and the rest of the band and Paul and management and even Simon on the video call, and now how it works is that if Liam jumps, nobody makes a fuss, and everybody gets on with doing things they don’t need him there for. If they’re travelling and he jumps (which thank fuck hasn’t happened yet), someone will wait for him while everyone else goes on ahead. He still knocks himself out with sleeping pills if he has to fly. It’s fine.

“Um,” Liam says, when the water’s shallow enough that they can stand. “Bit naked.”

“Serves you right,” Zayn says, but he wades ashore to grab Liam some shorts anyway, Liam watching his back as he goes. He’s a good one, is Zayn. A good friend.

Lou says that the saltwater just helps her scruff up his curls, and it doesn’t even matter that Zayn got wet because they spend the rest of the afternoon titting about in the surf, doing Baywatch runs whenever the cameras aren’t rolling. 

It’s a good day, but Liam still slips round at the end to apologise to the crew and everyone for holding things up.

“No point feeling bad about something you can’t help, is there,” Niall says, chomping a frozen banana in the van on the way back to the hotel.

Liam almost doesn’t, after that.

***

_November 2011 - Zayn is 18, Liam is 18_  


Another list:

1\. Liam stops straightening his hair.

2\. The first time Louis gives Liam a love bite, Liam’s so surprised that he jumps.

3\. Liam naked in confined spaces is a lot different than Liam naked in the field. Zayn thinks a lot about stretchy pants like the Hulk has, if there’s some superhero fabric that would make it through time and space so Zayn wouldn’t have to see so much of Liam’s skin. Harry, by contrast, seems to find Liam’s nudity inspiring.

4\. Liam lets slip that one of the most effective methods of staving off jumps is wanking. Niall laughs so hard that he cries, and every time Liam leaves a room Louis whistles. “Doctor’s orders, ey Li?”

Liam’s oddly unselfconscious about it, is the thing. Like he’s not embarrassed; like it’s just another thing that keeps him in his body. 

5\. Liam does a lot of sit-ups. This isn’t actually that different, only now he can pretend it’s about the CDD and not just showing off.

6\. Liam wants a tattoo.

“I don’t know if it’d stick, though.”

“I’m fairly sure the sticking is the point,” Zayn says, and Liam reaches across the mattress to swat at him.

“I _mean_ ,” he says, “what if the ink doesn’t count as part of me? Like, what if I got a tattoo and then the next time I jumped I just left a puddle of scabby ink on the floor?”

“That’s rank,” says Zayn. He’s seen Liam with tattoos.

“You’re rank,” says Liam, patting him. “And that’s not even the worst thing, because what if I got one and then it stressed me out so much that I jumped while I was still in the chair? I’d have a hard time explaining that one.”

“I’ll hold your hand,” Zayn says. Liam gives him the scrunchy-face smile.

“Done.”

7\. Zayn is fucked. That’s not much different, either.

***

_December 2011 - Liam is 18, Zayn is 18_  


The first day of tour rehearsals, he says, “I think we should rework some of the songs.”

“Right,” says Jon. “That’s – hmm.”

“D’you mean like, what, reggae?” Niall says.

“Change of direction,” says Harry. “Interesting.”

“Like, redistribute some of the parts. In case I jump,” Liam says determinedly. “Can’t sing all the first verses if I’m not here, can I?”

“Like a back-up plan, d’you mean?” Zayn says.

“Or, whatever. We could do it all the time. Less hassle than learning everything twice.” Jon still looks skeptical, so Liam says, “It’s only fair,” a little more firmly.

Jon sighs and turns to the others. “It’ll be you lot having to pick up the slack. You okay with this?”

Niall claps an arm round Louis’ shoulders. “Oh we’re just happy to be here, aren’t we, Lou?”

“Happy just to make the tea, Niall,” Louis says. “It’s an honour just to be nominated.”

So they move around some of the parts and it works, and it’s one less thing for Liam to worry about.

At the end of rehearsal Louis goes for both his nipples and tells him he has a beautiful spirit, and in the car on the way home Niall doesn’t say anything more about it, just gives him this side-hug, clinging tight.

***

_April 2012 - Zayn is 18, Liam is 17_  


“There’s no speakers,” Liam says, frowning.

“Shit,” says Zayn. They’ve been waiting for this all afternoon, counting down through the hours of Australian interviews until the minute they could get back to the hotel for the evening, spend an hour with Watch The Throne, have themselves a dance party in Zayn’s room.

“I can go back to mine,” Liam suggests, “see if Harry will lend us his.”

“Nah, hang on.” There’s an idea Zayn has, half-remembers. “I think if you put it in a bowl, it’s supposed to, like, amplify the sound?”

Liam makes a face like he doesn’t believe in science, but he dutifully rinses out Niall’s cereal bowl, catches the iPod Zayn throws him. He lights up when it works, throws the sound out louder. “Where’d you learn that?”

“Dunno,” Zayn says, “but it worked, didn’t it?”

“It did,” Liam agrees, “that’s so cool.” He starts to bop along, mouthing the Otis riff and sliding on the carpet. Zayn shakes his head at him, but he’s already joining in, shaking his shoulders.

They don’t quite get their hour before Louis crashes in, his hair done up for going out. “Stop whatever it is you’re doing,” he says importantly. “We’re going to get in some trouble.”

“We’re having a disco in here,” Liam says, shaking his hips, but Louis says, “Absolutely not,” and he picks up the bowl with the iPod in and ducks away so that Liam has to chase him.

They’ve not had a chance to properly go out since they’ve been in Australia and Louis’ on a mission. The club is loud and dark enough and Zayn would probably be having an alright time if Liam wasn’t talking to some girl, smiling with the umbrella from her drink tucked behind his ear while Niall and Louis watch from the bar, elbowing each other in glee.

Harry reappears, holding two drinks. “Anything?” He hands one off to Zayn, not a moment too soon.

“Nothing.”

“Liam’s pulled,” Harry says, nodding over.

“Shut up.” Zayn turns away, because he’s not going to spend the night staring while Liam gets off with someone, he just fucking isn’t.

Harry leans up beside him on the rail. “Don’t you worry, Zayn,” he says, nodding solemnly. “I know what you’re thinking, but I’ve got this, you just drink up. We are _popstars_. International popstars. There must be someone in Australia who wants to touch our dicks.”

“Where are they, then,” Zayn says dully. “It’s like they don’t even know we’re Shaggers of the Year.”

“It’s an outrage!” Harry agrees, and when Zayn finally cracks and smiles at that he bumps him with his shoulder, like, there you go. “Did you get any numbers, at the radio station?”

“Yeah,” Zayn says, because, yeah.

“Or we could,” Harry says, and stops. Zayn looks at Harry’s mouth, just for a second. It’s wet from the drink, and when he looks up again Harry raises his eyebrows.

“Yeah, go on,” says Zayn. He drains his drink. “Fuck it.”

They end up in the room Harry’s sharing with Liam, since it doesn’t look like Liam’ll be coming back to it.

Harry sucks him off, which isn’t that different from a girl sucking him off, and Zayn holds onto Harry’s shoulders rather than putting his hands in his curly hair. It’s good, Harry’s good, and Zayn pats at his cheek while he gets his breath back after he comes.

“Do you want me to,” he says, but Harry grins and shakes his head.

“Won’t take long,” he says, kneeing up the bed and pulling himself off. He’s really hard. Zayn watches for a moment, feeling vaguely bad for not helping, before he stirs himself and reaches out. He rubs Harry’s thigh, digs his thumb in, and Harry comes all over Zayn’s chest with a groan.

“Cheers for that,” Zayn says, but he can’t be arsed moving himself to clean up properly.

“Always a pleasure,” Harry says, and kisses him sloppy on the corner of his mouth before they settle in for the night still sticky, Harry on top of the sheets, Zayn under them.

“Stay, if you want,” Zayn says, all sleepy and generous after coming, and Harry kicks him, says, “It’s my room, dickhead.”

He wakes up when he hears the door go, opens his eyes to Liam standing frozen a few feet inside the room, staring over at them.

Harry’s still sprawled naked on top of the covers.

“Morning,” Zayn says, like an idiot, starts elbowing Harry through the sheets.

“What time is it,” Harry rasps, and Zayn thinks despairingly that there’s no need for him to sound like that, Zayn didn’t even fuck his throat.

“Er, about half five,” Liam says, “god, sorry,” and he backs out of the door.

He comes back into the room a minute later. “Sorry,” he says again, “you just, I’m going to,” and shuts himself in the bathroom.

“We going again?” Harry asks, yawning, and Zayn groans. “No? You should get a shower, too, then. You’ve got,” Harry gestures. “Jizz.”

By the time Zayn stumbles into Louis’ room for breakfast, scrubbed and thankfully jizz-free, Harry and Liam are both already at the table, Liam trying to eat in peace and Harry dimpling at Liam with a banana in his mouth. Zayn grabs some toast and tries not to make eye contact with anyone.

“Sorry about before,” he says quietly, when Harry’s wandered off to find more fruit salad. “Didn’t think you’d be back so early, we would have –”

“No, it’s fine,” Liam says, and Zayn says, “Right.”

“Honestly,” Liam says, a little more forcefully, and when Zayn looks at him properly he says, “It’s nothing to be ashamed about.”

It’s too early for Zayn to be able to handle this, Liam being so earnest with a love bite fresh on his throat, just next to his birthmark.

“Right,” he says again, and somehow manages not to just put his head down on the table and give up.

***

_May 2012 - Liam is 18, Zayn is 19_  


“I’m not really supposed to watch telly and films and things, though.” Liam tries to stare them down.

“What about Jurassic Park? You’ve definitely seen Jurassic Park.”

“You watch Toy Story _all the time_!”

“Well yeah, but I’m not supposed to.”

“If you can risk your health for dinosaurs you can risk it for _vital research_ , Liam.”

“I don’t know that you can really call Doctor Who research.”

“Be quiet now,” Louis says, sitting on him, and that’s that.

They plough through the discs quickly enough on the bus. Zayn likes Martha. Louis likes Donna. Everyone likes Rose, but Liam especially. When they get to River Song, though. . . It makes Liam ache a bit, how she knows the Doctor and he doesn’t know her.

“Can we turn it off,” he says suddenly, when she’s there on the screen with two thick electric cables in her hands. “I’ve got a headache.”

Zayn reaches for the remote in one quick movement and switches off the DVD, looks at him worriedly.

“Alright, Leemo?” Niall says, and Liam nods hurriedly, gets up and says, “Put it back on if you want, I’m just gonna –” He lies in his bunk for ages, trying to not to wonder if he’s left anybody out there waiting for him, someone out there loving him and waiting for him to show up at last.

He’s still awake when the others go to bed, when Zayn sticks his head in Liam’s bunk to check on him.

“Still feeling weird?” he asks, and Liam doesn’t really have a way to talk about it without coming off as massively big-headed. Like, how is he supposed to say that he’s worried he might be some sort of time-travelling heartbreaker? Dick.

“Yeah, no,” says Zayn when Liam’s been silent for a moment, evidently having decided for himself, “budge up,” and he squashes into Liam’s bunk.

“I’m really –”

“What do you think would happen, right,” Zayn says, ignoring his protests, “if the Doctor had a companion who was chrono-displaced?” 

“Ooh,” Liam says in spite of himself. “Timey-wimey.”

“Right?” says Zayn. “Like, you could have two versions of yourself in the TARDIS at once. Although, wouldn’t that get all – like when Rose went back to see her dad? Paradox, or whatever.”

“That’s not how it works for me,” says Liam. “I’ve been in the same place as myself loads of times.” Zayn probably doesn’t need to know the details; Liam should stop thinking about the details before he turns completely red. It’s really warm in the bunk with the two of them in here. He wrenches himself back on track.

“Usually,” he says, “it’s just my house that I go to. My parents’ house, where I grew up. So loads of times when I was little, there’d be a bigger version of me sat at the table having tea with us. I mean, it can be anywhere, like, that time I saw us when we were on tour, but it’s mostly. Places I’ve got a connection to. My old school, a few times. The track where I used to train. Sometimes if I jump forwards it’s where I live – the house I buy in the future, I guess, when I’ve settled down.”

“What about,” Zayn starts, and wets his lips. “Like, whoever you end up with. Have you ever seen them? Or, visited them, like?”

Liam shakes his head. “I’ve never seen them at the house, and I don’t know – I’m pretty strict with myself, usually. About knowing that sort of thing in advance.”

“No spoilers,” Zayn says softly.

Something in Liam lurches at that, but he says, “Yeah,” just as close and quiet. He doesn’t know how to tell Zayn the rest of it: how every time he sees that house he’s more sure that he’s living with another guy; how it felt, that time he – with himself. How he wants to reach out right now and stroke along Zayn’s stubble with the backs of his fingers. How he felt in Australia, walking in on Zayn and Harry.

“I feel weird dating people,” he says instead. “Like I’m leading them on cos I know I’m not going to marry them or whatever. It’d be bad enough if it was just the boyband thing, like, be my girlfriend, let’s hardly ever see each other. And _this_ –” He gestures to himself, meaning, _fucking time travel_ , “– on top of it. Let’s hardly ever see each other, yeah, and even when I’m there, I might not be. And any day now, I might meet –” He stops himself. “And it’s fine hooking up with people, I mean it’s good, it’s just. I get a bit. Lonely.”

“You’re not alone, though,” Zayn says, fierce as he ever gets. “Liam. You’re not.”

“No, I know,” Liam says. He closes his eyes then, because he can’t really handle the way Zayn’s face is right now, and there isn’t anywhere else to look, so close in the bunk.

“Bit embarrassing, really, that house. There’s this big piano, all these pictures of the band on the walls, gold records and things. Hey,” he says, and opens his eyes, struck by the joke. “Maybe I end up with Niall, heh.”

Zayn doesn’t seem suitably amused by that, so Liam adds, “Kidding.” He sighs. “Is it like this for everyone? Feeling like you know there’s someone out there for you, waiting for you even, and you just – haven’t met them yet.”

The air in the bunk feels heavy all of a sudden, the words hanging there and Zayn not saying anything, so Liam opens his mouth to sing the song, shake the mood, but Zayn knows him too well, immediately starts groaning.

“If you’re gonna sing Bublé, I’m gonna go.”

“Don’t,” says Liam quickly, “don’t, I won’t.” He reaches out, curls his hand in the front of Zayn’s t-shirt. Batman. “Just sleep here,” he says, and he knows it sounds a bit like begging.

“Alright,” Zayn says, and settles closer. Zayn’s the only one who sleeps as much as Liam does. It’s always been something they shared, crashing out together in hotel rooms, when they still shared hotel rooms. It’s been a while since they’ve done this, though.

Liam untangles the knot that’s been sitting in his chest all night, pulls the thought together:

“Did you hear what she said, River Song? She said, ‘Spoilers.’ That’s always – I’ve always said that, since I was little. About jumping, about not knowing what would happen. I guess I thought I made it up, but. I must have told it to myself, like.”

Zayn hums, and that’s – it feels like enough. To have said it out loud, and for Zayn to have heard it.

He sighs, entirely knackered now, and curls closer, presses his face against Zayn’s soft t-shirt. Zayn strokes up and down his back, breathing even. When he speaks, Liam feels it all over.

“What if you jumped while you were in the TARDIS, though? How would you even get back?”

And Liam lets Zayn talk it through, just shuts his eyes and listens.

***

_June 2012 - Zayn is 19, Liam is 18, and 26_  


A Liam from the future jumps back to them, right into their green room while they’re in California.

Zayn doesn’t realise at first, wanders in after a nap and stops in the doorway, stands there like an idiot until Liam – the older Liam, this other Liam, a Liam he hasn’t seen for years – sees him, looks up and smiles. This private smile, this hello smile.

“What date is it?” he says across the room. “This lot are useless.”

And Zayn tells him, feeling like he might fall over, nobody else paying a bit of attention.

The future Liam is sitting calm as anything on the couch, flanked by Louis and his younger self, Louis trying to look at his tattoos and Liam, the now Liam, covering his own eyes so he doesn’t see.

It’s too much for Zayn. He ducks outside for a cigarette that takes him four goes to light. His hand’s still shaking when the future Liam appears, leans up next to him against the wall. He’s wearing one of Liam’s tour vests; Zayn stares at the hair on his chest for a moment before he makes himself look away.

“He’s not caught on yet, then?”

Zayn gets this fierce rush of defensiveness for Liam, _his_ Liam, the one that’s with him every day. “It’s not his fault.” He flicks his cigarette away. “I could have told him, I haven’t told him.”

“And why’s that,” Liam asks, so gently that it pisses Zayn off, makes him want to thump something.

“Because I wanted it to be real!” he shouts, frustrated. “I wanted him to like me just because he liked me, not for – not because he thought he had to, or he owed me, or it was what was supposed to happen.”

“I did,” Liam says quietly, “he does,” and Zayn is reminded that this is still Liam, still a Liam he knows, cares about. “Is that what you felt? That you had to?”

“No,” says Zayn, mostly meaning it. He slumps back against the wall, the fight going out of him. “But at least one of us should have a say in it.”

The silence is too thick after he says it, and when Zayn looks at Liam he’s giving him the eyes, bright and sad and hopeful all at once, biting his lip and everything.

“For fuck’s sake,” Zayn says. “Just give us a fucking hug.”

Liam makes this relieved noise and Zayn ducks into his waiting arms, letting himself hang onto Liam as tightly as he always wants to. For a minute, it’s like that’s all there is in the world: the broadness of Liam’s chest; the warmth of his arms; the huff of his breath against Zayn’s ear.

They rock slowly from side to side, like the echo of a dance.

“How old are you now?”

“Twenty-six,” Liam says into the side of Zayn’s head.

“So you’ve – Bonfire Night, already? The last time I saw you before.”

He feels Liam nod.

Zayn laughs, a bit creaky. “Your fault then, innit? ‘It’ll happen? You’ll know when?’ What the fuck kind of advice is that.” He knocks his forehead into Liam’s shoulder. “Twat.”

Eventually they untangle themselves, and Liam squints at him. “You gonna come back in?”

“Yeah, just give me a minute.”

Zayn watches the line of Liam’s shoulders as he leaves, then lets his head thunk back against the brick.

When he goes back to the green room Niall’s the only one in there. “He left,” he says, shrugging. “The disappearing man. Shame really, I wanted to see if I could get him to tell me anything about the football.”

“No spoilers,” Zayn says, and sits heavily on the couch.

“You alright?” Niall says, eyeing him. “Scratch your head, if you like?”

“Yeah, go on,” Zayn says, and tips over so his head’s in Niall’s lap. Niall’s fingers dig in, perfect pressure, no dithering about.

“Must be in a bad way if you’re letting me touch your hair.” His voice is a bit hesitant, a question in it, and Zayn closes his eyes.

“Nah,” he says, “just homesick,” and it doesn’t feel like a lie.

***

_September 2012 - Liam is 19, Zayn is 19_  


“He’s got the bug now,” Harry says. “He won’t stop until he’s coloured in all over. Like the Bayeux Tapestry.”

“You what,” says Niall. “Ooh, _Bayeux Tapestry_ ,” in Harry’s voice, drawing out the Cheshire.

“With the arrows,” Harry says, tapping Liam’s forearm. “You could have someone’s eye out with those.”

“I’m probably not going to do that,” Liam says, “unless you’re asking for it. I don’t think they’re those sort of arrows.” He might as well explain it to them now, they’ll only take the piss more if it gets out in an interview or something, so he sighs, braces for it. “It’s supposed to be the logo, you know, represent the band. One each, like.”

“You disgust me, Payno,” Niall says fondly, and Zayn pinches his cheek, says, “Aw, Liam.”

“I know none of us quite made it through sixth form,” Louis says, “but Liam, I thought you could at least count to five.”

“I’m my own arrow, mate,” Liam jokes, and then he lets himself be honest. “No, but. The thing is, it’s really for you lot. Or about you lot, I guess. Like I’ve always got you with me, to remind me. So there you go,” he finishes, at which point Louis pretends to be sick, gives him a noogie and cuddles him after, careful of his arm.

“What about this one, then,” Zayn says, lifting his other arm gently to look at the line of script.

Liam hesitates.

“Come on,” says Louis, squeezing him.

“’S alright if it’s a bit soppy,” Niall says encouragingly. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

“It is,” Harry agrees, and Liam decides to let go of it, like the string of a balloon.

“It probably is a bit soppy,” he says, “and it is about the band. What it is –”

It’s alright, he thinks. He can tell them.

“Never in my life did I think I’d have what I have now,” is what he says, “and I don’t mean, like, the money and the fans and everything. I mean,” he goes on, looking at them all, looking at these boys he’s made his home with. “I’ve got you, and I never had friends like that before. Seems greedy to ask for anything more.” Which is good to remember, Liam thinks, looking at Zayn.

***

_November 2012 - Zayn is 19, Liam is 19_  


Liam’s sprawled on the bed in Zayn’s hotel room, eyeing the copy of Kavalier and Clay on his nightstand. He picks it up, testing the weight of it in his hands, and Zayn says, “Leave that, you’ll lose my place.”

“I’ll buy you a bookmark,” Liam says, reading the back cover. “I don’t know how you get through these big ones.”

“I just like the pictures.”

“Shut up,” Liam says, and he thumps Zayn gently with the book before he sets it back on the side. “Don’t pretend like you’re not really clever.”

He’s still fidgeting, filled with a restlessness that’s covering up a deeper unease. Liam hasn’t been right in himself, not for weeks now; Zayn’s noticed. The tattoos helped, for a while, but he’s not easy.

“Do you want to hear about the book?” Zayn asks, to distract him. “I think you’d like it.”

“Yeah,” Liam says, sounding grateful. He settles in against the headboard, ready for Zayn to start.

“So there’re these cousins,” Zayn says, “in the war, and they create this comic.”

“Sounds good so far,” Liam says, and Zayn flicks him.

“One of them does the drawing and one of them does the story, and the superhero they come up with, his power is that he can escape from anything, like a Houdini sort of thing. Only it’s the war, right, so there’s all this other stuff going on, like they’re Jewish and they’ve got family in Europe.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, it’s intense, and they’re like, channelling all of it into their comic. They have their superhero punching Hitler on the cover!”

Liam lets out a laugh at that, small and bright like he’s surprised, and there’s nowhere Zayn would rather be than here, both of them propped up against the headboard.

“Like there’s this apartment that’s just full of comic book artists, and there’s this bit where they’re all working through the weekend trying to get this first issue together, it’s so cool.” Zayn has to look up at the ceiling to say the next bit. “One of the cousins, he’s in love with this girl. But it’s the war, I don’t know. I think it’s going to be sad.”

“But you like it,” Liam says.

Zayn nods, and then he says, “The other cousin’s gay. Like, he falls in love with this man.” 

They’re both quiet.

“Imagine a universe,” Liam says, and stops. When Zayn rolls his head to look Liam is very close.

“What,” Zayn says, his voice barely a whisper, and Liam’s eyes flutter shut. Zayn watches as Liam’s lips part, like he’s begging to be kissed. Zayn watches, and it’s like the room’s gone slow-motion, but timing is a bitch like that, is the fucking problem. Because the parallel universe thing, it’s an excuse, and not a good one. Him and Liam, they’re better than that, they’re more important.

“The thing about parallel universes,” he says, and Liam opens his eyes, looking faintly baffled at being still unkissed. Zayn wants to kiss him so fucking much, but he makes himself finish. “If we just go on making up all the things we could do in other universes, then we won’t ever do them in this one.”

He says it as gently as he can, but Liam’s face still falls. “Right. Sorry.”

Zayn is fucking done with excuses, he realises. He has no idea what he’s even waiting for anymore, why he can’t just be honest.

“I’ve got to tell you something,” he says, but Liam’s not listening.

Liam’s saying, “You’re right,” and then he’s saying, “Zayn,” and then he’s kissing him. It’s such a gentle kiss, like Liam doesn’t want to presume, and Zayn leans into it, just enough that Liam will _know_ , their mouths making a perfect kiss-shape together like something practised on the back of a hand.

When it’s over, he can feel Liam’s breath against his mouth, still so close. Zayn opens his eyes.

“Shit,” Liam says, and then he fucking jumps.

Zayn stays waiting on the bed for two hours. He reads a bit more of his book, because why the fuck not, at this point, and he was right, it does get sad. He spends another hour steaming up the bathroom, and when he gets out of the shower, the pile of Liam’s clothes on top of the duvet is gone. So that’s that, then.

***

_November 2012 - Liam is 19, and 16_  


He can’t talk to Zayn, so he cuts off all his hair. It doesn’t help.

If you kiss someone and your body rips you away from them, what sort of freak does that make you? Liam’s never jumped during sex, not ever; usually it has the opposite effect, it’s one of the best things for keeping him in the present.

The kiss had been such a soft thing, and even that much was too much for his body to handle, he’d wanted it so badly. God, what if Zayn thinks that Liam had wanted to, like, escape from him, he can’t stand it.

He toys with the idea of going dancing, getting fucked up and pulling a random in a toilet somewhere, just to prove he can do it, but he doesn’t honestly think it’d sort him out, because it isn’t just that he wants to get off with a guy. He wants _Zayn_. It feels like he’s always wanted Zayn; he can’t untangle when it started and he doesn’t know how to make himself stop. He doesn’t want to stop.

It’s almost a relief when he jumps again, until he sees the card propped up on the shelf in his old bedroom and his heart sinks. Sixteen. Worst birthday ever.

He doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry about the fact he still fits into his old basketball shorts – has he changed at all, these last few years? What has he been doing, exactly?

He lies on his old bed, staring at those old faded bunny rabbit curtains, until he hears the front door go downstairs.

He sits up to watch the bedroom door open, sees himself, that him three years ago, watches the way his shoulders sink.

“Worst birthday,” Liam says. “Absolute worst.”

It’s so weird, watching himself turn in surprise. “Next year’s better,” he adds, “if it helps.” Seventeen, he’d had the boys.

“Spoilers,” the young him says, like a reflex, but he comes to sit next to Liam on the bed. He presses himself against Liam’s shoulder while he asks where he’s come from, reaches up to rub his hair.

“Oi,” Liam says, pushing his hand away, but he puts his arm around him, pulls him in so he knows Liam doesn’t mean it really.

The other him sighs. “They still did the cake and everything.” God, it really was the worst fucking birthday, but Liam doesn’t want to be thinking about their parents right now.

“You know what they’re like,” Liam offers, and he says, “Yeah,” thickly. He’s not going to cry, is he? Liam doesn't think he cried.

“Didn’t get you a present,” Liam says, nudging, and he says, “Rude,” half a joke between them before they’re quiet again.

Liam knows what it means, this birthday.

It had seemed like a dream, after, the sex, something that couldn’t have happened, not really, but this kid is so lonely, desperate for any kind of affection, and Liam can do this, he can sort this out. So he swallows, and he says, “How about I make it up to you,” trying to sound certain, trying to make it sound easy.

He looks up at Liam. “How d’you mean,” he says, and Liam doesn’t want him to be nervous. “C’mere,” he says, “just,” and kisses him, barely anything.

After a breath Liam pulls back. “Okay?” he says, and he nods and kisses Liam this time, slightly clumsy, but true, and Liam tightens his arms around him, starts to kiss him properly.

It’s not that different from wanking, he tells himself. But it’s so weird, isn’t it, to do this, there must be something wrong with him, with them. Like, it’s sick.

But he remembers, it hadn’t felt wrong at all. And he remembers, of course he does, how it felt, this day. To have someone touch him. He’d thought about it over and over, alone in his bed and in the shower, even in his bunk on the bus. It had meant something.

Liam did that, so he’s going to now, and he _wants_ to, wants to lose himself, wants to help himself get lost.

He thinks about – not Zayn, but what he’d want someone to do for him, trying to remember what he’d wanted when he was sixteen.

Liam tips them over slowly, lets his whole weight settle over him while they keep kissing, wetter and dirtier now, and the way he gasps and grabs at Liam’s shoulders almost makes Liam grin against him. He manages not to, though, doesn’t think it’d be appreciated. Liam kisses down his throat, instead, uses just a hint of teeth so he won’t leave marks. He makes this kind of gulping sound, arching up for it, and Liam does smile then, hides it in the skin of his neck.

Liam pushes up the hem of his t-shirt, saying, “Do you want,” and he practically falls off the bed getting out of his clothes. He pulls everything off in about ten seconds and then stops and stands there, like he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do next.

Liam’s mouth is abruptly dry. He does the first thing he can think of, reaches out to pull him in by the hip, strokes the skin there. It seems very young, sixteen, all of a sudden.

“Can I,” Liam says, surprised himself at how much he wants it now, and he gasps out, “Yeah, yes,” and lets Liam pull him down to the bed again.

He leans up and into the kiss so easily, and when Liam’s over him on the bed he can feel how he just – gives himself up to it. Just lets go. And Liam wants to do that too, so he lays him down and sucks him off. He goes slow, makes it as good as he can, holding him down so he doesn’t rip out of himself, and when he comes Liam swallows it all, crawls back up the mattress to wrap him up tight in his arms.

“That’s it,” Liam says while he strokes his back, “that’s better,” and it’s the kind of thing that should be embarrassing but Liam doesn’t give a fuck, not anymore.

Eventually, he draws a breath so deep Liam can feel it blowing in and out, and says, “Hey. If it’s my birthday, is it your birthday too?” which is honestly not what Liam was expecting to hear.

“Dunno,” he says, with the kind of laugh where it feels like he might cry. “Doesn’t feel much like it.”

“It can be your birthday,” he says then, and his hand creeps into Liam’s shorts and Liam lets him, gives him this and takes it for himself. When he comes, it feels like letting go of something.

Afterwards, they tangle their skinny legs together and Liam’s bones feel old. “Thanks,” he says against Liam’s chest, and Liam scratches lightly through his longer hair, says, “You’d do the same for me.”

“We should go down and see them,” he says, and Liam says, “In a bit.” He’s wobbly still, heartsick and homesick and tired, but they’re alright. He’ll be alright.

***

_November 2012 - Zayn is 19, Liam is 19_  


There’s a day when Liam’s lips look swollen, and Zayn can’t help but think –

And he’d sworn he’d give up waiting on this –

And Liam isn’t even talking to him properly, clearly freaked out about that kiss –

It’s just that every time he sees the sad shorn bristles of Liam’s hair, some treacherous part of him thinks, Soon.

***

_December 2012 - Liam is 19, Zayn is 15, and 19_  


New York is a whirlwind, same as always.

Liam gets in a halfhearted bit of Christmas shopping before he gets mobbed, gives up. They’ve got few days grace before Madison Square Garden, he should try and get some sleep, but here he is, just standing in the middle of his hotel room like an idiot, like there’s somewhere he’s forgotten he should be –

He lands in an overgrown playing field, nowhere he’s been before that he can remember, but it’s warm, at least.

There’s a carrier bag full of clothes resting against one of the rusting goalposts: jeans, socks, a black t-shirt that he pulls on blindly. All of it fits him.

He’s obviously expected so he stays and sits, leaning against the goal. For once, he’s properly glad to have jumped, to get out of his life for a little while. He breathes deep. The t-shirt smells new.

Before too long there’s a figure trampling through the long grass towards him, and as they get nearer Liam gets hit with this wave of recognition, but he can’t see how it could be –

“You found the top, then.”

“Zayn?”

The smile is the same, the tongue behind the teeth. “You expecting someone else?” He sits down in the grass, so close that Liam can’t help but be aware of all the ways this Zayn seems different, try to make sense of them: his arms more skinny than lean, the baggy trackies, that boy smell of Lynx that pulls Liam right back to the changing rooms at school. Even sitting down like this, he’s much shorter. Than Liam, than the him Liam knows.

The cigarettes, though; that’s the same.

“Your hair looks good,” Zayn says, lighting up. “Proper hard, like.” The way he says it, taking the piss but not really, it’s familiar in a way that knocks Liam off balance, reminds him of how Zayn had looked him up and down, the first day after Liam cut his hair.

“You shouldn’t smoke, you know.” It’s the only thing Liam can think to say. “It’s not good for your voice.”

“Alright, dad.”

Zayn’s teasing him, bumping Liam with his shoulder, and everything about this is so weird that Liam officially gives up. “Actually, can I have one of those?”

“What’s up with you today?” Zayn says, but he gives him one. “You’re being weird.”

“Sorry,” Liam says automatically. “Just, strange day.”

“No spoilers,” Zayn says, rolling his eyes. Jesus.

“What,” Liam starts. His mouth feels like cotton wool. “What date is it?”

“Now he asks,” says Zayn. “2008. May. Twenty-eighth.”

2008\. Zayn’s fifteen. Zayn’s fifteen and he knows Liam and that date’s chiming in the back of Liam’s head. “Right,” he says, and they finish their cigarettes.

“What d’you think of the top then?”

Liam looks down at himself when Zayn speaks. “It’s Batman,” he says dumbly. It’s a simple print, the stark yellow logo against the black, like that one of Zayn’s that’s on its last legs, only good for sleeping in. When he doesn’t say anything else, Zayn says, “Right,” clearly bothered, looking straight out across the field, not at Liam. “I just thought it’d be nice for you to have something of your own, when you come. I can probably still take it back if you don’t want it. It’s not a big thing, like.”

God, Liam’s a dick, to take his confusion out on Zayn, to make him sound all tight and uncertain like that.

“No, it’s great,” he says sincerely, because it is. It is great, that Zayn did this for him. “It’s _Batman_ , seriously, Zayn. It’s so great to see you,” he says, which isn’t even what they were talking about, but Liam means it. There’s no one else he’d rather see.

And maybe this younger Zayn is used to Liam making an idiot of himself, because all he says is, “Alright, calm down, knobhead,” reaches out and rubs Liam’s head. It’s strangely reassuring; Liam lets himself lean into it.

“You really like it?”

Liam feels uncontrollably, painfully fond, because Zayn’s trying so hard not to seem like it’s a big deal, and that –

That right there is _his_ Zayn, because Zayn always checks. Zayn always cares.

“I love it,” he says. “Come here,” and wraps Zayn up in his arms, feels right in himself for the first time since he got here.

“It’s just a t-shirt,” Zayn says, muffled, hugging back. Liam’s hugged Zayn before, more times than he can count, but there’s something about this moment, about the way that this Zayn, young and narrow and unguarded, is holding onto Liam just as tightly as Liam’s holding him.

And he still has no idea what’s going on, why he’s here or how Zayn knows him, but it’s honestly the best fucking hug of Liam’s life.

It’s late when he gets back, the lights of New York twinkling in through his open curtains, and he has to see Zayn, he has to see Zayn right now.

He’s got Niall’s spare keycard and Niall has Zayn’s, so he pulls on whatever clothes are on his floor, trips out into the corridor and two doors down.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says when he gets in, screening the room with his hand in case Niall’s with a girl or on the phone or having a wank or something. He grabs the envelope with Zayn’s key off the dresser before Niall can say anything more than “Oi!” and crashes out again.

He misses the lock on his first go, has to line the keycard up and try again and then he’s got the door open, he’s stumbling into the room.

Zayn sits up in bed, too quickly to have been asleep. Liam’s halfway across the room before it registers, the Bat-signal splashed across his chest, caught in the lamplight.

The black faded soft, the logo peeling, but –

“You gave me that t-shirt,” Liam says stupidly, “you just gave me –”

He sinks to his knees beside the bed, reaching for Zayn’s arm. He turns it out from the elbow, scans frantically down the inked columns of numbers, until he sees it:

_23.05.08_

“I was just there,” he says. “I was just there. With you.”

“You were in Bradford? You were on the field?”

“In 2008,” Liam says, “and you knew who I was, you had clothes for me.” He can’t think. “You never said.”

“Oh god,” Zayn says, eyes huge. “Liam.”

Liam touches the tattoo. A year and a half, Zayn’s had it, longer, even. “Are all these. . .” There’s so many dates there. Zayn’s hand is at his shoulder. Liam looks back up at him. “How long?”

Zayn looks him straight in the eye. “Since I was six.”

He still has one hand bunched in the shoulder of Liam’s t-shirt, thumb rubbing almost compulsively over the bare skin of his throat. His birthmark, Liam realises.

“Say something,” Zayn begs. “Fuck, Liam, do you even know –”

His whole entire life leading up to this moment, both their lives maybe, and Liam doesn’t want to wait any longer.

“Tell me later,” he says, and kisses him.

It’s just a firm press at first, a statement of intent, Liam catching Zayn’s lips with his, but the noise Zayn makes against his mouth strikes something in the pit of Liam’s stomach, and it gets hotter so quickly, mouths open, tongues wet and sliding. He’s kissed Zayn before but he’s never known the hot inside of his mouth, it’s making him dizzy.

Liam sucks on Zayn’s tongue, and Zayn’s hand slides up the back of his head, and Liam has to get closer, he’s going to go mad if he can’t get closer.

He crawls onto the mattress, the two of them working together to shove Zayn across the bed. Zayn pulls Liam down on top of him and Liam goes easy, one of Zayn’s legs hitching up around his.

It’s like Liam’s world’s been doubled, he’s seeing them both at once: the Zayn he had in his arms, a few minutes and four years ago, and the Zayn that’s under him now. Zayn’s shoulders are broader and his skin is inked but he’s still so light and he kisses so fiercely, both his arms wound round Liam’s neck.

Liam runs his hands down Zayn’s sides and up under his t-shirt, rubbing over his stomach so that Zayn arches up against the heel of his hand. He wants to strip them down so there’s nothing between them but he can’t get over it, that t-shirt and everything it means, every time he’s seen Zayn wear it and now he knows it was for him. If Zayn could wear it, and also be naked, that would be perfect.

He pulls back to breathe, just for a second, only he gets distracted by Zayn’s arm and his tattoo and _23.05.08_. Liam wants to lick at the dark ink, so he does, and Zayn keeps making these _noises_ , and that decides it, they have to get out of their clothes right now.

“Off, off,” he says, shoving the Batman t-shirt up to Zayn’s armpits and hoping he gets the message before tipping off him and stripping as quickly as he can. He throws his top away blindly and kicks his pants off the bed, and when he scrambles up onto his knees Zayn’s waiting for him, kneeling too.

They’re kneeling and they’re facing each other, naked on the bed.

Liam puts his hand on Zayn’s waist and watches him shiver. He shuffles closer, they both shuffle closer so they can kiss again, their cocks hard between their bellies.

“Is this happening,” Zayn says, low and hot against his jaw. “Like, is it actually happening?”

“I’ve wanted,” Liam pants, as Zayn moves lower to suck at the skin of his neck, “for so long.”

Zayn lifts his mouth long enough to say, “ _You’ve_ wanted,” and bites back down. What Liam wants is to lie down for him, wants to put his hands over his head and let Zayn have everything, take whatever he wants, but there isn’t time now, Zayn’s taking hold of his cock.

Zayn’s hand on him is, god, it makes his whole skin sing, down his spine and along his forearms and the short prickling hair on his head. He wants to make Zayn feel this good, too, so he wraps his hand round Zayn’s dick, kisses the groan out of his mouth.

They wank each other like that, kissing hot and wet and desperate, Zayn gripping the back of Liam’s neck and Liam’s free arm wrapped around Zayn’s back. It’s the closest Liam’s felt to anyone in his life, feeling Zayn’s hands on him. When Zayn’s rhythm starts to falter Liam adjusts his grip so he’s got his hand round both of them, and it’s incredible, the way he can squeeze them together, that’s his precome he’s rubbing over Zayn’s dick, fuck, _fuck_ –

And that’s Zayn’s come slicking him, and Zayn, it’s _Zayn_ , and Liam’s coming.

They curl up after, face to face, let the soft weight of the hotel duvet settle around their shoulders.

“What were you going to tell me, before?”

Zayn’s quiet for a long time, and in the end he says, “You were the best person I knew.”

Liam leans their foreheads together.

“Well,” he says. “You’re the best person I know now.”

***

_December 2012 - Zayn is 19, Liam is 19_  


Zayn opens his eyes, and Liam smiles at him from the next pillow, says, “Hi,” and then he jumps.

Zayn goes for a piss, gives himself a cursory wipe down with a flannel. He can’t stop smiling at himself in the mirror while he brushes his teeth. He gets the lube out of his bag on his way back to bed. He settles in to wait.

It’s only about ten minutes before Liam reappears, making the mattress bounce a little. “Hi,” Zayn says, and then he’s on him.

Zayn can’t get over it, the way Liam lets himself be rolled over. If Zayn had tried this in the field, just fucking pounced on him, pulled him down in that long grass, would Liam have gone with it?

The birthmark on Liam’s throat is slightly reddened still – Zayn hadn’t been able to resist the urge last night and he doesn’t want to now, wants to bruise it darker. He kisses it gently before he uses his teeth and Liam arches for it eagerly. Zayn remembers every time Liam tilted his neck to show it off, prove who they were to each other, and sucks harder, claiming.

He lifts his head when he’s satisfied and Liam immediately chases him for a kiss, their mouths fitting together so easy, needy.

They pull apart just enough to look at each other, and Zayn sees his own want mirrored back at him. For the first time in so long Liam knows everything, knows it all, and there’s nothing Zayn has to hide.

“What do you want?” he asks Liam. He kisses him again before he can answer and Liam laughs against his mouth, breathless. Zayn can feel him hard against him already, is hardening himself.

“I want to suck you off,” Liam says when Zayn pulls back again, “and then I want you to fuck me.”

Zayn had thought with the first go he’d get it out of his system, that he wouldn’t be so overwhelmed with want. What a fucking idiot.

He splays his hand out over Liam’s chest and Liam looks steadily back at him, his eyes so bright, and it’s the Liam he grew up knowing and the Liam he’s known these past two years, has wanted half his life. It’s part of him now, this love, bedded deep, and he wants everything. He thinks of pushing himself inside Liam, of them belonging to each other like that.

“Yes,” he says, “yeah, do it, I want that,” and Liam rolls them over.

He kisses his way down, gentle with the Arabic at Zayn’s collarbone, biting at his hip and making him shudder.

Zayn holds himself very still while Liam blows him, lets Liam work his mouth over his cock how he likes, lets Liam press his thumbs into the hollows of Zayn’s hips.

The noise of the New York morning doesn’t touch them; all there is in the room is Liam’s soft wet noises and the harsh rasp of his own breath.

He’s panting now, with the effort of not just holding Liam still and fucking his mouth, knowing that Liam would take it gladly. He lets his hands come up to cradle Liam’s head; his hair is too short for Zayn to twist his hands in, and the soft bristle against his palms is so much sensation.

Before he comes, he feels an echoing tingle in the soles of his feet, and Liam swallows him down.

Liam keeps him in his mouth until it’s right on the edge of too much, and when he pulls off he rests his head against Zayn’s thigh before he crawls back up his body.

They kiss again, Zayn tasting himself when Liam’s tongue slips against his. He cups Liam’s jaw in his hand, wondering if it aches. Liam drags in a breath and says, “Fuck me, _please_.”

The hoarseness in his voice makes Zayn wish he could get hard again right now, tugs in his belly. He presses his thumb against Liam’s bottom lip, wet and swollen, before he reaches for the lube.

“I missed you,” he tells Liam, fingers slick and pushing in his arse. “Like, for years I missed you.”

“I love you,” Liam says, “oh my god, I love you,” and the love comes out like a sob.

Zayn’s hard again but he doesn’t want to stop; he puts all the things he’s ever felt about Liam in the searching curl of his fingers, takes the way Liam’s face screws up with pleasure as his due, the tears starting to leak from the corners of his eyes.

“Please,” Liam says, and Zayn adds a third finger, watches what it does to Liam, how it makes him arch and tremble, skin all sheeny with sweat.

“Come on,” Zayn says, “that’s it,” and feels shaky himself with the sense of being responsible for something so important. He can’t stop looking at Liam, the beautiful angry mark on his throat and bold shameless splay of his limbs across the bed as Zayn fucks him like this, the way he rolls his hips down onto Zayn’s hand, like it’s all he needs.

Liam’s fully crying by the time he comes, drawing in these huge shaking breaths, and he covers his face with his hand.

“Hey,” Zayn says. He kisses Liam’s wrist because it’s nearest, strokes his side. “Liam, babe.” He nudges in with his nose, kisses the top of Liam’s ear. “Don’t hide.”

“Hah,” Liam says, and peeks out, smile watery. “God. That’s never happened to me before. The sex crying,” he clarifies.

Zayn kisses the still-damp salt of his face. “What are you like,” he says quietly, and Liam kisses him again. Zayn’s never kissed anyone who smiles so much during; it makes everything he’s feeling push at the corners of his mouth, too. He bundles Liam up, still kissing him, rearranging them so they’re all entwined and still sticky, one of Liam’s ankles between his.

Liam sighs against him. “I still want you to. . . you know.”

Zayn bites his earlobe. “Say it.” Liam makes an embarrassed noise, and Zayn presses, “Go on. You don’t have to feel awkward just because you did sex crying.”

“Fuck _off_ ,” Liam says, and Zayn kisses him, delighted, until Liam says against his mouth, “Fuck me.”

“Yeah.” He rubs his dick against Liam’s hip.

Liam shivers, shifts. “Maybe in a minute, though.” He looks sheepish. “Like, ten minutes.”

“Can I tell you a bit more,” Zayn says, “about what it was like?”

Liam nods and resettles on the pillow, giving Zayn his full attention.

“You knew me better than anyone. And then I met you again, and it was like. . . Like I gave you all these bits of myself, but you hadn’t picked them up yet.”

Liam looks stricken. Zayn rubs his thumb behind his ear, against the short grain of his hair. “I still know you, though. I’ve always known you. And I know you will, I believe you will. Easy.”

Liam takes a deep breath, still a bit snuffly from the sex crying. Zayn touches his cheek, touches his jaw. He loves him so much.

“I feel like such an idiot,” Liam says. His face is so well-loved and familiar and new, this way he looks at Zayn like Zayn could break him, like Zayn could give him everything he’s ever wanted. “Of course it’s you. Who else would it be?”

***

**and the two pilot lights go zoom**

_February 2013 - Liam is 19, Zayn is 20_  


“You were coming onto me! Were you always coming onto me?”

Zayn’s sitting up, just pulling his headphones off, already dressed, and Liam jumps up on the bed, bouncing a bit on his knees.

“I was just with you, and you were fifteen, and I’m pretty sure you were after something.” 

Liam can still picture it: Zayn sitting in the grass; fifteen and blowing smoke and looking at Liam through his eyelashes, fuck.

“Well, probably,” Zayn says. “I really fancied you, dickhead.”

“Oh my god,” Liam says. “Was I leading you on? It feels like I’m grooming you, that’s what they call it. What if I accidentally groomed you? This is so weird.”

Zayn shrugs. “It never felt like that to me,” he says simply. Liam’s chest does this thing where it expands like a hot air balloon and he ducks in and kisses Zayn quickly, one two three, Zayn’s hands coming up on the last to hold him there.

“Idiot,” Zayn says softly against his mouth, “get dressed,” and oh, right, they’re supposed to meet the others for breakfast. Liam scrambles off the bed, scrambles into his clothes as Zayn leans by the door and waits for him.

“I used to think you were so cool,” Zayn says as they leave their room. “I thought you knew everything.”

“And now you _know_ I know everything,” Liam finishes for him. “I know so much. You don’t even know, half the things I know. And don’t ask,” he warns. “No spoilers.”

“Hah!” Zayn shouts, and slings his arm round Liam’s neck, pulling him in close as they bump their way down the hallway. Liam turns his face into it, lets his mouth rest against Zayn’s forearm, against the list of dates inked in black.

***

_March 2013 - Zayn is 20, Liam is 19, and 27_  


Liam’s crashed out next to him, but there’s another Liam crawling into bed on his other side, trying to fit his broader body in the space.

“Make him move up,” he says, a bit petulant. “I’m very old and tired.”

“Let him sleep,” Zayn says, “he’s knackered,” but he shifts enough to give Liam room to get comfortable on the mattress, then flops down on top of him. “And you’re not that old.”

“When is it?” Liam asks, one hand coming up to stroke Zayn’s back, and Zayn has to stop himself from grinning like a lunatic just at the question. Talking about time travel with two Liams in his bed, that’s his life now.

His Liam’s been working out like mad, trying to stave off the jumping while they’re on tour, and it’s working, mostly. He’s still not as built as this, though. “March 2013,” Zayn says. “Take Me Home tour.”

“You two sorted yourselves out, then.”

“Yeah, no thanks to you.” Zayn bites gently at his chest. “ _No spoilers_. It’s such bullshit.”

Liam shrugs, says, “That’s how it happened,” and it’s still infuriating, Zayn doesn’t even know why he kisses him.

When he pulls back, Liam just looks at him, all fond, and suddenly it’s like Zayn’s the time traveller for once. Like he’s looking at his future.

Zayn takes it all in, the creases round Liam’s eyes and the fullness of his beard, all the things that are waiting for him. He rakes his nails through Liam’s thick chest hair, playing with it, maybe gearing up for something interesting, and slides his hand down to investigate, scratching lightly at the hair on Liam’s belly, lower still – and then Liam yawns right in his face.

“I take it back,” Zayn says. “You definitely are that old.”

They’re on the edge of sleep when he asks, “But we’re, where you are. I mean we’re still –”

“Yeah,” says Liam. “We are.”

A few days later Liam jumps back to Bradford, 2001, the youngest he’s ever seen Zayn.

"Is it weird to say you were cute? You were so cute.” Zayn wrinkles his nose. “You were! And clever.”

And suddenly Zayn’s jealous. Like, stupidly jealous, an irrational flash of it. Liam notices, stops fiddling with the string of his hoodie.

“What’s wrong?”

“Did you ever jump forward when you were really little. Like, this far forward?”

Liam frowns, thinking about it. “Not that I remember.”

“So I won’t – won’t get to meet you, then? Like, a little you.”

Zayn feels stupid, trying to explain it, why it matters, but Liam smiles sad like he gets it. “I don’t think so,” he says, ducking in to give Zayn a gentle kiss. “Leave it with me, though.”

Liam spends the next week making secretive phone calls to his mum, and “Leave it with me” turns out to mean a photo album. His mum brings it to one of the Birmingham shows and Liam pulls it out on the bus after, the five of them squashed up trying to see the pages, Zayn holding the book in the middle.

There’s a few pictures at the beginning where Liam’s really little, a mostly-anonymous tiny red baby that could be any of them, really; the first photo where he looks like himself he’s about two, sitting on his sister’s knee looking perfectly anxious, with these big chubby cheeks.

“I need copies of all of these,” proclaims Louis. “I want to make t-shirts.”

Liam sort of hovers, leaning over into Zayn’s space to explain the pictures.

“I want a proper look,” Harry whinges, up on his knees craning to see, but Zayn holds tight to the album and Niall slaps him down.

“Oh, that’s the day there were three of us,” Liam says, pointing himself out in the middle of a group shot, looking ten and fifteen and twenty-five. “It was Nicola’s birthday.”

There’s Liam wearing a racing vest and holding up a medal, smiling for the camera. Liam and his dad with badminton rackets, balancing shuttlecocks on their noses. Liam buried in the sand on the kind of beach where there should be donkeys, his sisters kneeling next to him. There’s loads of Liam singing, in pubs and shopping centres and holiday parks. Liam in Grease, the collar of his jacket popped (Louis slaps him a high-five).

The pictures go all the way up to the X Factor: the five of them standing with Simon at Judges Houses, looking shellshocked with happiness and gripping onto each other tight. There’s a shot of Zayn and Liam sleeping folded over each other in the back of a car (“Aww,” says Niall, “look at youse.”). The final picture in the album is a group shot, the five of them with their arms around each other. Zayn’s finger hovers over the page.

He tells Liam, “We look like babies.”

Liam coughs, a bit awkwardly. “Sorry it’s not more up-to-date. She does have cuttings and everything, but. I think she thinks we know what we look like now.”

“Let’s see,” Zayn says, twisting so they’re facing each other, letting Harry grab the album away. He gets right up close. “What do you look like?”

“Big nose,” Liam says, slightly muffled. “Big eyebrows.”

“Yup,” says Zayn, “got it,” and closes his eyes.

Liam says, “Your eyelashes,” and then, “gonna take a picture,” his nose digging into the side of Zayn’s face, now, and Zayn smiles, eyes still scrunched shut.

He hears the fake shutter noise of the camera going off, and after a second Liam laughs, says, “Not bad.” Zayn opens his eyes and Liam tilts the screen so he can see.

In the picture, Zayn’s grinning with his eyes closed and Liam’s smiling straight into the camera and they’re both so happy that it’s almost too much to look at. Zayn clears his throat. “Good selfie, that.” 

“Learned from the best,” Liam says, and pulls a proper duckface, looking so pleased with himself that Zayn has to pin him down and snog the expression off his face.

“This is a shocking display,” he hears Louis say. “I am shocked.”

***

_April 2013 - Liam is 19, Zayn is 20_  


“What are you doing?”

Liam looks down at himself, cock in one hand, phone in the other so he can read through Twitter a bit before the show later. He looks back at Zayn, standing in the doorway between their room and the en suite, all sleep-rumpled and grumpy in t-shirt and boxers. He thinks it’s probably pretty obvious what he’s doing. Is there a better way of saying it than ‘daily wank’?

“Daily wank,” he says. He gestures. “Obviously.”

“Fuck’s sake,” says Zayn, disappearing back into the bedroom. 

Liam tucks himself back in, washes his hands quickly. He leaves his phone on the side of the sink.

Zayn’s on the bed. He’s got his top off. 

“I didn’t think you were still doing daily wank.” One of his hands trails down his belly. “What with how much we’ve been fucking.” 

They’ve been fucking a lot.

“It’s medicinal,” Liam says dumbly.

“Is it not enough for you?” Zayn says, which is ridiculous, and Zayn looks like he knows it’s ridiculous, like _Liam’s_ ridiculous.

Sex with Zayn. . . Liam hadn’t quite realised, back when he was Being Professional and very determinedly Not Thinking About It (slash Thinking About It All The Time), how intense it would be. How much he’d need it. He’s maybe still not got his head round it, all that want.

“Bit clinical, isn’t it,” Zayn says, lifting his hips up to push his pants off. “Still. If it’s what you need. Get up here, then.”

“What,” Liam says. He’s still just standing and staring.

“If you’re going to do it I at least want to watch.”

Liam does move then, strips quick as he can and gets up on the bed, straddles Zayn’s hips. “How’s that?”

Zayn grins up at him. “Best seat in the house.”

Liam’s still mostly hard, and he can feel Zayn naked under him getting the same way. Liam shifts down against him, can’t help it, and Zayn’s mouth parts on a breath.

“Not gonna touch you,” he says. “Wouldn’t be a wank if I touched you.”

“I’m doing it,” Liam says, and licks his palm, lets Zayn see his tongue between his fingers.

“So do it, then.”

Liam does it, wraps his hand around, starts pulling himself off. He tries to go slowly at first, so Zayn can really see, but it’s so much, it’s so hot, Zayn just watching him, eyes all dark, Liam speeds up, can’t help it.

And Zayn said he wouldn’t touch him but one hand still comes up, gripping Liam’s arse tight, the way he does sometimes when he’s sucking him off.

Liam can feel everything, all of it keeping him here: Zayn’s fingers clutching at him and his own hand stripping his cock and the pressure of his knees digging into the bed.

Zayn reaches up with his other hand, his knuckles brushing Liam’s belly, and he’s so beautiful, he’s the most beautiful thing in the world.

“Are you here,” Zayn says, “are you staying?” and Liam nods frantically, gets out, “Still here.”

“Good,” says Zayn, “come on,” and Liam comes, striping right up Zayn’s chest.

Still shuddering, he leans down and licks him clean, Zayn’s belly trembling under his mouth as he moves lower, Zayn’s hard cock digging into his chin. He kisses up the length of it, sucks the head into his mouth for just a moment.

“Love you,” he says when he pulls off, because he does, and Zayn finally pushes him back.

Liam follows him into the bathroom, wanks him off in the shower. Zayn tips his head back against the tile, arm hooked tight around Liam’s neck, and Liam presses up against him as close as he can get, feels Zayn come between their bodies, kissing and kissing him while the spray hits his shoulder blades.

While Zayn’s still breathing hard, Liam says, “You know it’s not that I want to be going, right? I love getting to see you at the field, but. Apart from that. You do get that I’d always rather be here.”

“Yeah,” Zayn says. He reaches over, fiddles with the dial on the shower.

“Okay, then.” Liam wraps his arms around Zayn’s middle, hooks his chin over his shoulder. “Same time tomorrow?”

So yeah, the sex is incredible, but here’s Zayn laughing at him and kissing his ear, hand on his hip, turning him under the spray while Liam sighs into it, and that’s almost better, somehow.

***

_May 2014 - Zayn is 21, Liam is 20_  


“Hey,” says Zayn, puts his hand out to stroke Liam’s shoulder blade, warm and smooth, and Liam snuffles into the pillow. The light in Brazil looks good where it hits his skin, the morning filtering in through their hotel curtains. He missed half their show yesterday.

“Hey,” Zayn says again, waiting until Liam turns his head to squint at him. “I was thinking,” he says, and he has to clear his throat. “The parallel universe thing.”

Liam looks so tired, big dark circles under his eyes, but he makes the effort, blinks patiently at Zayn while he pulls his words together.

“There must be loads of them, more than you could count, right, where the thing that’s different has nothing to do with us. And we’re just exactly like we are now. Kangaroo rampage in Australia, or something.”

Liam smiles, eyes creasing up with it. “New shopping mall opens in Dallas,” he says. “Very boring,” and Zayn has to find his hand, kiss the knuckles and hope he’s doing the same in more universes than he can count, more than he can think of.

“Or even,” he goes on, feeling oddly desperate about it, “like, it wasn’t like this but we’re still together, yeah? Not the band, not X Factor, maybe not even time travel, just that we were at uni together. Anything. Just that we met,” he says, and he does believe it, that that’s all it would have taken.

“I do love you,” Liam says, almost like a sigh, and then he’s gone.

***

_July 2014 - Liam is 20, Zayn is 42, and 21_  


They’re halfway through soundcheck, so it’s a pain in the arse when Liam –

He jumps to what he’s pretty sure is the kitchen of the future house, so he just shouts, “Hello!” and wanders about until he finds someone.

Zayn’s in the den, looking at a tablet.

He’s years older than Liam’s ever seen him, salt and pepper shot through the sides of his hair. He’s wearing glasses with thin wire frames.

He sets the tablet down on the coffee table, leans back, and just looks at Liam steadily.

Liam looks back.

“You look tired,” Zayn says.

“You look so hot,” Liam says honestly. “How old are you?”

“Seventy,” says Zayn. “Seventy-five. I can’t get it up.”

Liam climbs right into his lap. “That’s okay.” Zayn’s hands stroke down the skin of his back, and he curls in close. “I’m only with you for your money, I hope you’re still rich.”

“Hello, stranger,” Zayn says into his neck. “Do you want some clothes?”

Liam shakes his head.

“I could do you some lunch?”

“Nah.”

“You sure you’re alright?”

Liam sighs, so big it’s almost funny. “It’s just hard, at the minute. The tour and everything. I’m jumping too much.”

Zayn kisses the side of his head, tugs him in a bit closer. “You can talk to me, you know. I mean, the other me; the lads, too. You should. You’re not in it on your own, babe.”

“No, I know,” Liam says quietly.

“Yeah, well,” Zayn says. He rubs up and down Liam’s tattoo with his thumb. “Anything else I can do for you? While you’re here.”

“Could you just, um. Take off the glasses?” Zayn obliges. Liam stares. “Okay, put them back on.”

Zayn rolls his eyes as he does it. “You done? Can I get on with reading this?” 

Liam cranes around to get a look at the tablet he’s reaching for. “What is it?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t say. Might constitute a spoiler.”

It looks like a script, Liam thinks. “Are you acting?”

“Shush,” Zayn says, tightening his arm around him, and Liam settles, nosing at the arm of his glasses.

“Cutting it fine,” Louis says when he gets back, passing Liam his mic pack.

“But I’m here,” Liam says, flashing a grin he doesn’t quite feel. “So it’s not a problem. Hands in, boys.”

On the bus after the show, squashed in Zayn’s bunk, curtains drawn, he breathes deeply.

“You okay?”

Liam nods into the front of Zayn’s t-shirt. “Tired.”

“You were gone for ages today,” Zayn says, a bit of concern in his voice but not pressing it. He’s got a hand tucked down Liam’s joggers, stroking the small of his back.

“Miss me?”

“Pined.” It’s so warm around the edges, the way Zayn says it; it makes Liam feel so safe, knowing that even if he didn’t have the rest of it, he’d still have this. 

Liam tips his head back, looks at Zayn. “Spoiler alert,” he says, and kisses him.

“What,” Zayn says, breathless, when they break apart.

“Just that,” Liam says, and taps the bridge of Zayn’s nose where the glasses will sit.

***

_August 2015 - Zayn is 22, Liam is 21_  


“Love a band meeting,” Niall says, but he’s smiling like he knows something’s up, so Zayn just comes out and says it:

“We’re not going to renew our contracts.”

“Me,” Liam interrupts, “it’s me, I’m not renewing mine.” Zayn squeezes his knee, and Liam grabs his hand before he goes on, “It’s the CDD. You probably knew that already, but I want to be clear that it’s not for any other reason, and if I thought there was a way –” he breaks off. “But that’s just me. _I_ can’t. So if you wanted –”

“Do you really think we’re going to do it without you, Liam?” Louis says. “Come on, now.”

“We wouldn’t,” Harry says, and Niall says, “No way.”

Liam nods. “It’s not necessarily forever,” he says in a rush, and they let him, let him have the lie while he’s saying goodbye to five years of his life, of all their lives. “I just need –”

“Time,” Harry finishes, nodding sagely.

“For fuck’s sake, Harry,” Zayn says. He feels like he’s going to cry all of a sudden. He has to take in this deep shuddering breath, and beside him Liam’s rubbing at his face.

“Lads,” Niall says, all croaky. “Let’s have a fucking huddle,” and they fall in like they always do, the five of them and everything else on the outside, unimportant. Zayn looks at their faces, the four people that know him better than anyone.

“Five years,” he says. “Fucking hell.”

“On balance,” Harry says, “I really think we did alright.”

“Smashed it,” Niall says.

“I love you,” Liam tells them. “I’ve loved this.”

“Fucking shut up,” Louis says, and they’re all crying now, clutching closer at each other’s backs, bowing their heads in. “You’re all twats, I love you.”

“Yeah,” says Zayn, and they stand there for a long time, the five of them together.

***

_January 2016 - Liam is 22, Zayn is 23 (just)_  


“Did you not get me a present, then?”

Liam stops towelling his hair. “What?” he says cautiously. Usually Zayn sleeps later than this.

“It’s just that normally you wake me up to give me my present, and you’ve not given it me yet.”

Zayn’s present is in the drawer. Zayn is propped up on his elbows now, looking pointedly towards the drawer.

“Even Harry got me a present.” Harry had given Zayn a _book_ , a fancy illustrated edition of that book about time travel that Liam’s never allowed to read, which is a joke but not really.

“I’ve not quite wrapped it yet,” Liam says, but he gives in, and fishes it out of the drawer.

Zayn looks at it. “You got me a keyring.”

It’s actually a very significant keyring that Liam had bought from a tourist trap on the beach in Spain, all the way back at Judges’ Houses. He’d found it the last time he was back at his parents’ house, turned it over in his hand.

“Yep,” he says. “It’s Spider-man.”

“I like Spider-man,” Zayn says, and tosses the keyring over the side of the bed. “Happy birthday to me.” He tugs Liam in by the towel at his hips.

“I just had a shower,” Liam says, but he’s smiling when Zayn kisses him.

“Don’t care,” says Zayn, “it’s my fucking birthday,” and he tumbles Liam down onto the sheets, throws his towel aside.

Liam loves being fucked on his back like this, Zayn over him and inside him, close enough to kiss. Zayn’s teasing him, though, thrusting lazy and shallow, pulling almost all the way out and staying there until Liam begs him. When Liam can’t stand it any more he reaches down to grab at Zayn’s arse, drag him in closer – letting him know that just because it’s his birthday, it doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be making an effort.

Zayn takes it to heart. “Demanding,” he says, but he pushes Liam’s knee back against his chest and fucks him harder, rakes his nails down the back of Liam’s thigh to make him moan and kisses him when he comes.

“It’s for a house,” Liam says when they’ve cleaned up.

“We’ve got houses,” Zayn says, but he’s smiling.

“No, but I mean like a proper, settling-down house.”

“Did you buy me a house, babe?”

“I bought you a keyring,” Liam corrects him, “which you threw away, thanks, and it’s not even new, I had it already.”

“I’m touched,” says Zayn. “And what are we gonna do with a big house like that?”

“We’re not on tour,” Liam says, “we can do whatever we want.”

“You could get a piano,” Zayn says, “one of those grand ones, for your songwriting,” and Liam’s face must do something really stupid at that, the way Zayn smiles at him.

“We could have a studio,” he says, “or a library. Or both! And a really big staircase.”

“Yeah, go on then,” Zayn says. “Let’s buy a really nice house. One that we’re going to live in for years and years and years.”

“Deal,” says Liam. “Happy birthday.”

“Reckon this is gonna end up costing me quite a lot, as birthday presents go.”

“Are you not rich?” Liam says. “I think there’s been a terrible mistake.”

“Ha,” says Zayn, rolling onto his back like he’s going to go back to sleep. “You’re hilarious, you are.”

It’s a joke, this morning, but not really.

“I’m not being funny,” Liam says, and pauses.

“What,” says Zayn, turning his head to look at him properly. “What, babe?”

“I think this might be it,” Liam says. “I think we might be it. Like, for good.”

Zayn smiles, tongue behind his teeth. “Catch on quick, don’t you,” he says, and kisses him.

***

_May 2016 - Zayn is 23, Liam is 22_  


“He’s finally done it,” Louis says when he sees the piano. “He’s finally gone full Barlow.”

“Don’t be a dick,” Zayn says. “He’s really excited.”

Liam comes into the foyer (are they calling it a foyer? They can’t call it a foyer, fuck), drapes an arm around each of their shoulders. “Yeah, Tommo, don’t be a dick.”

“Would I ever,” Louis says, and kisses Liam on the cheek.

“Zayn’s going to get a Beauty and the Beast library,” Liam says. “We’re very excited about it.”

“Now who’s the dick,” Zayn says, but he really is giddy about that library.

***

_November 2016 - Liam is 23, Zayn is 23_  


“Do you want me to get you a ring? I could get you a ring.”

“Why would I need a ring,” Zayn says, without opening his eyes.

“Well, if you wanted one,” says Liam, slightly stung. “Just because I can’t wear one doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.”

Zayn squints at him. “Will I not look a bit of a prick, if I’m the only one who’s got a ring?”

Liam shrugs. “You could put it on a necklace or something. Whatever.”

“Bit Lord of the Rings,” says Zayn, yawning. “And you can’t wear a necklace either, so.”

“I was thinking I could get a tattoo.”

“Let’s both do that, then,” Zayn says, closing his eyes. “Ring tattoos, very cool.”

Liam huffs. “But I don’t want one that’s, like, pretending to be a ring. I don’t want it on my finger.”

Zayn sighs, like his life is very hard. Liam pokes him in the cheek.

“Oi!”

“Sorry,” Liam says, “I love you, but I was going to say.” He waits until Zayn opens his eyes again. “Would you design me something? A tattoo?”

“Oh,” Zayn says softly. “Yeah, I could. Probably do that, yeah.”

“Cool,” says Liam, and kisses him lightly. “Thanks. Love you.” He snuggles back down in the bed and closes his eyes. A moment later, he hears Zayn rooting around in his bedside drawer.

“You don’t need to do it right now,” he says generously.

“Might as well,” he hears, “now somebody’s got me up.”

Liam shifts onto his belly, arms folded under his head, half-dozing while he listens to the scratch of Zayn’s pen.

Zayn nudges him a while later. “What d’you think?”

“Are those wings?” Liam says, peering at the paper.

“Yep,” says Zayn. He turns to Liam, gives him the eyes. “I used to think you were an angel, when I was little.”

“What,” says Liam, “really?”

“Fuck off,” Zayn says, “no, not really.” He taps Liam on the nose with his pen. “Might’ve thought you were Buzz Lightyear, for like, a minute.”

“Humph,” says Liam. “What are you drawing wings for, then?”

“I thought,” Zayn says, turning the paper to show him. “To go on your heels, like.”

Liam looks at the sketch. It’s still rough, sort of bold and delicate at the same time. “To go on my heels,” he says, “like whatsisface. Hermes.” Disney’s Hercules is very underrated.

“Yeah, the messenger,” Zayn says. “Because, um, you were always visiting, and then you’d be gone, just like that.”

Liam leans across and very carefully puts the piece of paper on the bedside table, so it won’t crease. He turns back to Zayn.

“Babe,” he says. “Have you thought about this before?”

The corner of Zayn’s mouth goes. “Maybe,” he says. “A bit.”

It hurts like hell, getting it, but afterwards Liam can’t stop staring at his ankle, the very tip of one wing just brushing the screw.

***

_September 2017 - Zayn is 24, Liam is 24_  


“There you are,” says Zayn around a mouthful of toast, because Liam’s been gone about an hour, but Liam doesn’t even get up, just bursts out laughing, curls up right there on the kitchen floor, still naked and heaving for breath.

“What,” says Zayn, “where did you go?” but Liam just shakes his head. “ _Eyebrow_ ,” is all he manages to choke out, before dissolving into giggles again.

“Oh, fuck off,” says Zayn. He bites another corner off his toast, disgruntled. God, he remembers that, showing Liam where he’d had the lines cut in; he’d thought he was so fucking cool. He puts his toast down. “Ah, shit.”

“No!” protests Liam, finally getting up. “It was very sweet. Cool, even.”

“Augh,” says Zayn, still grumpy, and Liam comes to stand behind him, puts his hands on Zayn’s shoulders. “Very cool,” he says again, and Zayn tips his head back, mollified slightly. Liam rubs at both his eyebrows with his thumbs, ruffling them up: another little piece of their past collected.

“I probably would have died,” Zayn says, “if you’d done that when I was thirteen.”

“Filth,” Liam says, scrunching his face up in mock disapproval, and Zayn’s already smiling when Liam leans down to kiss his nose.

***

_June 2018 - Liam is 24, Zayn is 16, and 25_  


As soon as Zayn says, Bonfire Night, he knows.

_5.11.09_

The last date on the list.

Zayn’s sixteen and he brought sparklers, and Liam’s wearing the Batman t-shirt, wanting to get this right, because it’s the last date on the list.

The way Zayn says, “I’m not gonna see you after this, am I,” makes Liam ache with how it isn’t a question.

He just says, “Zayn,” looks at him as straight as he can with everything he feels.

Zayn takes his last sparkler and throws it away, and puts his cold November hand on Liam’s cheek. “Can I?” he says, and stretches up to kiss Liam when he nods.

Liam wonders at how many first kisses there are between them, all the ways they found each other. He tries to make it good, holds Zayn’s jaw the way he likes, opens it up just enough.

When the kiss breaks Zayn grabs his hoodie like he thinks he’s going to jump, and Liam grins, not yet, not yet, kisses him again.

Zayn’s hands push eager under Liam’s hoodie, under the t-shirt, and Liam doesn’t stop him, because it’s Zayn. He always wants Zayn. Zayn keeps pushing, though, goes for his waistband and squeezes Liam’s dick through his jeans. Liam says, “Wait, wait,” and he might be twenty-four now but he still has to lean away so his point isn’t undermined by his erection.

Zayn doesn’t want to wait. Zayn keeps kissing him and Liam can’t help kissing back, holding Zayn tight around his waist, because it’s the last date on the list, there won’t be kissing again for years, and there should be something here to remember.

They don’t usually plan this stuff out. There’s the list, obviously, but beyond that Zayn doesn’t tend to tell him beforehand the things they did and Liam doesn’t ask. They don’t rehearse, neither of them liking the idea of there being marks they have to hit – but Liam would know they’re not going to have sex now even if Zayn had never bitched about it.

The way Zayn’s staring him down is amazing but Liam thinks about that first time, in the hotel room in New York, the way Zayn had _looked_ at him, and he wouldn’t change it for anything.

“It should be the first time for both of us,” he says, trying to explain. Zayn must see how much he means it because he stops fighting then, presses his face into Liam’s neck when Liam folds him up in his arms, trying to hold on, give them just a bit longer.

“I love you,” Zayn says into the quiet between them. “Did you know that?”

Liam can’t speak around the sudden lump in his throat so he just nods. God, Zayn. Liam was never this brave at sixteen, could never have fought for them like this.

Zayn kisses his fucking throat, right on the birthmark, says, “Thanks,” into his neck, and Liam tells him not to go looking for it, holds him tight and hopes that Zayn won’t waste any time waiting, will get everything he wants.

He presses a kiss to Zayn’s eyebrow, and goes home.

“Sorry I didn’t fuck you when you were sixteen,” he says, leaning in the doorway of the den.

“Eh,” says Zayn. He smiles at Liam over the back of the couch. “I got over it,” and Liam grins back, goes over to him and climbs right into his lap, knees either side of Zayn’s hips.

He pushes Zayn’s sleeve up, rubs at his tattoo, the tattoo he's learned off by heart, and Liam's face must be doing something stupid because Zayn cocks his head at him. 

“What are you thinking, babe?”

Liam doesn’t know where to start, because it keeps expanding, all this love, and he doesn’t know how to explain it, except with the hitch of his hips, the loop of his arms around Zayn’s neck.

“Remember,” he starts, and his breath catches as Zayn’s hand slips down the back of his joggers. “God, the first time you put your fingers in me, and I came before you could fuck me.”

“Yeah, and then you cried.” He kisses the corner of Liam’s eye.

It hadn’t been the last time for that, either, but Liam’s not ashamed of it. “You make me feel so good,” he tells Zayn, rolling his hips, working himself closer. “That’s what I’m thinking. So fucking good, Zayn,” and Zayn groans, and kisses him.

They get themselves there slowly, because they have the time, the drag of friction through their clothes until Liam’s panting damp against the side of Zayn’s head.

Zayn says into his ear, “You smell like sparklers,” and it’s that of all things that pushes Liam over the edge, a sob caught in his throat. Zayn follows like he was waiting for it, and the two of them come in their pants like teenagers.

***

_February 2020 - Zayn is 27, Liam is 26_

“Do you want to go to Chicago?”

“For Valentine’s, do you mean?”

Zayn nods, and Liam says, “Cool,” so they go to Chicago for Valentine’s Day.

Zayn wonders if hotel sex is different when hotels are a novelty. Hotels were what he and Liam had the first few years they were together, all those hotels and their bunks on the bus; so many wide beds with too many pillows where he spread Liam out, where they learned how they were together while the world went on outside. Like any room they had was theirs.

This room’s theirs, now. The way Zayn feels, when Liam’s riding him, his hands planted on Zayn’s chest while he rocks himself on Zayn’s cock, it hasn’t ever been anyone else’s.

“What were you thinking about,” Liam says, after, and Zayn says, “Like, déjà vu, I don’t know,” and Liam says, “Fancy,” and starts singing Beyoncé.

They stomp around in the cold and eat weird pizza and Liam threatens to drag him to the basketball, makes them take seven hundred pictures pulling faces in the Bean.

“Did you know,” Liam says, “the first Ferris wheel was built in Chicago?”

“I did not.”

“For something called the World Fair. Harry told me. I think they took it down though.”

“Gutted,” says Zayn, “I would have been well up for riding on a rickety old hundred-year-old Ferris wheel deathtrap.”

“It’d be an _adventure_ ,” Liam says, nipping reproachfully at his earlobe.

Liam jumps just as they’re heading out to their fancy Valentine’s dinner. Zayn waits in the hotel room for an hour, and then he kills another walking in the slushy cold with the collar of his coat turned up, until he gives up and orders room service.

He wonders where Liam is, that he’d be gone so long.

He doesn’t reappear until morning. Zayn runs his hands all over him, checking. When he’s satisfied that Liam’s in one piece, he says, “If you wanted to go to the basketball that badly, you could have just said.”

“Don’t,” says Liam, “we’re supposed to be on holiday. I’m so sorry, I’ll go to all the art galleries you want, fuck.”

“Just the one gallery,” Zayn says, “I promise.”

They see a big poster for the exhibition as they go up the Art Institute steps, and Liam squeezes his hand. In the queue, he says, “And she’s the one –”

“She’s the wife, yeah.”

They don’t say anything else until they’re almost in the room; Zayn hesitates at the threshold.

“It’s about birds,” he says, inexplicably nervous, “and longing. Maybe the time travel thing.”

“Gotcha.”

They separate once they’re in; Liam goes straight for the big pieces in the middle of the room, but Zayn can’t make himself do it yet, so he reads the biography by the door even though he’s already read her book. Clare Abshire. The house where she grew up, the meadow (the field, he thinks). Her method, the pulp and paper. Her husband. Her book. It doesn’t mention the CDD.

There’s a picture of her, too, that Zayn finds he doesn’t want to do more than glance at. Too close to home, maybe.

He works himself up to it, the pull in the middle of the space, spends time with the smaller pieces suspended around the edges that he thinks are about her daughter.

He knows he’s edging around the whole reason he brought them here, but now that he’s in the room, it’s overwhelming. When he finally finds the nerve to look at it properly it’s so much; the folds like time, pockets of things lost.

The lights almost shine straight through the biggest piece, the sheets of the wings, stretched so thin but holding strong.

And it’s so beautiful, the stuff this woman made when she was worried about someone she loved; when she was lonely; because it was in her. Zayn stays for a long time.

There’s a lull as the crowd in the chamber ebbs out, and he misses Liam, suddenly. He can’t see him anywhere in the room; he desperately doesn’t want him to have jumped again, jumped away from this. Zayn tamps down the rising panic. There’s no tell-tale pile of clothes on the floor, nobody pointing or gawping.

He finds him in the gift shop, buying the biggest, glossiest copy of the catalogue.

Zayn leafs through it back in the hotel room, holds it heavy in their bed, Liam curled around his legs, kissing his kneecap.

***

_June 2020 - Liam is 26, and 21, Zayn is 21, and 27_  


They seem _so young_.

Watching them together, Liam feels every day of the five years distance. He hadn’t realised at the time, how they looked; they’re so greedy for each other and it’s like they don’t see anyone else. Sex had been like a drug, like sometimes he’d been looking at the world through a cloud of the next time he’d get to touch Zayn’s skin. They seem so young.

They’d been in bed, when Liam had jumped to them, Zayn’s fingers in Liam’s arse, Zayn whispering in Liam’s ear. He’d stilled, when he’d seen Liam standing at the foot of the bed, and his Liam had whimpered, and Zayn had smiled.

Now, Liam’s kneeling between the two of them on the bed, caught somewhere between painfully turned-on at Zayn rubbing his dick into the small of his back, and the fondness he always feels for the younger versions of himself, the desire to tell him it’ll all be okay.

Liam watches the way his eyes flick to Zayn over Liam’s shoulder.

“I want to see you,” Zayn says, and he nods, and kisses Liam, a bit hesitant.

Liam feels Zayn’s hand tighten at his hip, and he remembers this from the other side, the faint lingering worry that Zayn was still waiting for a person Liam hadn’t become yet. He kisses back the way he knows this Liam likes to be kissed, strokes his tongue in and smiles at the way it makes him shiver and relax.

When the kiss breaks Liam says quietly, “There’s nothing to be jealous of, babe,” and reaches round to rub lightly at his hole, still slick from Zayn’s fingers. “Oh,” he breathes, and arches for it, clutches at Liam’s arm.

“Fuck,” he hears Zayn say. Zayn kisses his shoulder, works his way round until he’s sucking at Liam’s throat.

“You can’t be sending me home with love bites,” Liam says, even as he tilts his neck for more.

“Tell him I did it,” Zayn says. He licks over the skin. “He’ll remember.”

“Now, Zayn, come on,” the other Liam says, and Zayn says, “Yeah.”

Liam watches as they arrange themselves, how they move together: Liam on his hands and knees and Zayn behind him, the way Zayn kisses the back of his neck before pushing in all in a rush, the broken noise Liam makes, how his shoulders go loose.

“Fuck, you’re so good, you’re amazing,” Zayn pants, and Liam shoves back hard against him.

Liam’s never seen himself get fucked. They’ve never done that, he’s never done that with himself – as if that would be the thing that would cross a line, would somehow be too much. Maybe it would be. It’s making him hard, though.

“Suck his cock, Li.”

Liam meets Zayn’s eyes after he says it, the bow of the other Liam’s back between them.

“Go on,” Zayn tells him, “you like it,” and it’s true every way there is.

The other Liam has both his elbows on the bed and his head hanging low, groaning now; Liam tips his face up, makes him look at him, and he nods. “Please,” he says, turning his face into Liam’s palm.

Liam edges closer, his dick hard in his hand, and he feeds it into his eager open mouth. He moans around it, letting Zayn’s thrusts move him back and forth, his lips bumping Liam’s fist. He sucks hard, that young flash of pride when he does something he knows Liam likes.

Liam remembers this, too, how he felt so full, how he couldn’t think at all, how it was too good for him to last. Sure enough, his mouth soon slips off Liam entirely and he pants into the sheets. He comes with his eyes closed, and Zayn says, “ _Liam_ ,” and comes too, like he’s surprised, and so beautiful.

Liam’s done, too, wanking himself hard and fast, tipping his chin up so he comes on his face as his eyes flutter shut, striping up his cheek and falling back against the pillows, watching as Zayn curls over to kiss him clean.

They settle in the bed with him, Zayn in the middle, and Liam holds his face to kiss him, the edge of a bite.

“Fucking hell,” he says, and on Zayn’s other side Liam covers his face to laugh.

It’s late when he gets back – Zayn’s sleeping, facing Liam’s side of the bed, and Liam’s missed him, slides in beside him on sheets they chose together.

He wakes up to Zayn watching him, and other mornings it’s the other way round but today it’s like this, Zayn waiting to watch him come awake. Liam recognises the look on his face from last night and five years ago, the love in it. And they’re older now, but it’s still the most important thing. The only thing, really.

“Hi,” he says, sleep-husked.

“Good night?” Zayn asks, thumb light against Liam’s throat, and Liam smiles, reaches to stroke the morning mess of his hair.

***

_October 2020 - Zayn is 27, Liam is 27_  


It’s a dick move, sitting in the den like this, playing Xbox.

It isn’t even Liam’s fault, not really. Logically, Zayn knows that he can’t control his jumps, but fuck, tonight of all nights. Zayn had needed him.

He’d jumped when they were in the car, on the way to the premiere. The film had been selected as one of the gala screenings at the festival, a big fucking deal, a big British moment and Riz’s due, properly. And Liam missed it, there one second and his suit crumpled empty on the back seat the next.

Zayn had to get out and blink into the flashing bulbs on his own, sit through the film without Liam squeezing his hand or rubbing his leg to calm him down, whispering to him at the good bits and laughing at the jokes. Proud of him.

He knows he didn’t come off well in the Q and A after, too terse and moody. He probably looked full of himself, and now everyone can tell themselves they were right, he’s got no business trying to act, and nobody will let him do it again. He skipped the party after, too, only finding Riz to say goodbye, taking his tight hug and the “Thanks, bro,” and only managing a nod, nowhere near what he wanted to say.

Liam had been waiting on the pavement, shivering in an I Heart London hoodie, and Zayn couldn’t even fucking look at him.

He’d slid into the car after Zayn, folded up his suit like it mattered. He’d said sorry as if it was someone’s fault and Zayn hadn’t said how he’d barely watched the film, hands clenched in the fabric of his trousers, seeing everything bad that could happen to Liam, jumping back into traffic, the wings on his heels frozen off.

So Zayn’s sitting in the den, playing Xbox like a dick, because he knows it makes Liam dizzy, makes him jump, and he can’t, tonight. Liam comes to hover in the doorway.

“Think I’m just going to get in the shower.”

Without looking at him, Zayn says, “You’re alright, yeah?”

“Fine,” Liam says quietly.

Zayn couldn’t give less of a shit about what’s happening on the screen, but he’s still staring at it fixedly, still pressing buttons. “Go for your shower, Liam.”

Liam goes for his shower, door shutting heavy on his way out. Zayn counts to twenty, and then he pushes the controller away.

***

_March 2021 - Liam is 27, Zayn is 28_  


There’s no point telling Zayn.

Either it’s a day that’s on the list and he couldn’t make it, couldn’t get away –

Or it isn’t on the list, so he wouldn’t know to come. Liam’s not going to make Zayn feel guilty about it years after the fact, and even if he wanted to he doesn’t know the date to tell him.

It’s a bit nippy so Liam does some half-hearted circuits to keep warm, tries to focus on brainstorming for the songwriting session he’s got coming up in a few days.

It’s a bit embarrassing, how many of Liam’s songs are about Zayn. It’s not as if he records them all himself anymore; it isn’t about having that kind of control. He gives them away now, those lyrics, those intervals that mark the way his heart jumps in his chest when Zayn smiles that smile, tongue behind his teeth.

It makes him feel more present, the idea that Zayn might hear one of his songs on the radio when he’s not there, be reminded in someone else’s voice how much Liam loves him.

By the time he gets home he’s shivering, doesn’t want to do anything but stand under the hot spray of the shower. Zayn gets in with him, and Liam holds onto him, tries to come back, to stay.

***

_December 2021 - Zayn is 28, Liam is 28_  


Ruth comes over with Liam’s nephews. They run around buzzing until they wear themselves out, so excited for Christmas, and Zayn has Jamie on his knee, looks up to see Liam watching them with this sad, tight look on his face.

“What,” Zayn says when they’re gone, the house echoing quiet.

“You want kids,” Liam says, like he’s upset, like maybe he’s been spoiling for this fight for a while.

“It’s not a big deal,” Zayn says, even though it is. “We don’t have to talk about it now, come on.”

“Zayn,” Liam says tightly.

"What do you want me to say?" he says, exasperated. “Yeah, sometimes I think about us having a family. I’m not going to fight with you about it.”

“Do you think I don’t want that?” It’s like Liam’s holding himself away, knows that if they hold each other they’ll never talk about this, never say what needs saying. “Do you think I don’t want kids that’d have eyes like yours, that’d be clever and good at drawing?”

“Big chubby cheeks like you had when you were little,” Zayn says, stepping closer. Come on. “Really fast at running,” and the smile Liam gives him in return breaks his heart. Fuck, they’re too young to be this tired.

“CDD is genetic,” he says, like Zayn doesn’t know, like he isn’t the reason Zayn has subscriptions to New Scientist and Scientific America and seven thousand related email alerts. “I can’t – and even if we did, if we adopted, or – you couldn’t leave me on my own with a baby. I could never take our kid out by myself. What sort of dad could I be like that?”

“You’d be the best dad,” Zayn says helplessly, because he doesn’t know what to do when Liam’s voice breaks that way. “Liam.”

“I’m missing things,” Liam says, wiping his eyes, “important things for you, and I hate it. I don’t want to miss anything else.”

“What _do_ you want, babe?” Zayn asks him. He gets his hand on Liam’s jaw, finally touching, and Liam closes his eyes, leans into it.

“I want to finish the dates left on the list –” seventeen, there are seventeen dates left on the list “– and I want to find out about gene therapy, and. I need you to promise that you’ll think about it, at least. I couldn’t do it without you.”

Zayn doesn’t want to think about it. Zayn wants to smash something. “I’m scared,” he says. “Fucking terrified, alright, because I love you. I love you. I don’t want anything to happen to you. I don’t want you to be different.”

Liam makes this frustrated noise. “I wouldn’t be _different_ ,” he says, “I’d still be myself.”

Zayn can’t know that for sure, though. “I’ve always known you,” is what he says. He doesn’t think he can fix this, so he just tells the truth.

Liam’s face is so determined. “Maybe not even time travel, that’s what you said. You said it wouldn’t matter, you said we’d have found each other anyway. Do you remember that?”

Zayn does remember. It seems a very long time ago.

“I do,” he says, “and I meant it, but Liam –”

Liam gives him the sad smile again, like he can see right through him.

“It isn’t everything I am,” he says.

What if it doesn’t work, Zayn thinks, and what if it does?

***

_January 2022, Liam is 28, Zayn is 28_  


Liam licks slow, dragging his tongue from the base of Zayn’s spine down over his hole, all the way down the back of his balls.

Zayn’s breathing shallow and holding himself still still still, the way he does when he really wants to fucking feel it, Li, that’s what he says. Liam can see the tremble in his thighs, though, hears the noises Zayn swallows when Liam teases his hole with the tip of his tongue.

“You ready?” Liam asks, letting Zayn feel his breath against him, and when Zayn says, “Yeah,” he sinks two fingers in.

When he fucks Zayn, he likes to do it like this. From behind, so he can pull Zayn’s hips up, make it good. He stays deep, now, folds over him and rests his forehead in the sweat between Zayn’s shoulder blades, the black ink there that Liam loves most, the folded paper bird.

Afer all these years, Liam doesn’t even have to say it out loud, but he does anyway, he always wants to say it.

“Love you,” he manages. “So fucking much.”

His hand finds Zayn’s on the pillow, laces their fingers and squeezes tight, feels Zayn squeeze right back even as he clenches around Liam’s dick.

“Me too,” Zayn says, shaky, “I do, make me come, _ah_ –”

Liam does it, makes him come, holds him up and presses his face against his back, a great crying feeling swallowing him as he fucks his own orgasm out.

I want to stay here, he thinks, I want to stay here with _him_.

In the morning he tells Zayn, “I’m going to find a doctor.”

***

_July 2023 - Zayn is 30, Liam is 29_  


“This is about the oldest I’ve ever seen you, I think.”

“Yeah?” Liam yawns. “I’ve seen you older.” He knocks Zayn’s ankle with his foot. “You looked good.”

Zayn feels so lucky, to have had perfect nights like this one, the light just going and the two of them stretched out on the grass in their big back garden, Liam’s knuckles brushing softly up and down Zayn’s forearm.

There’s one date left on the list.

“There’s nothing I’d change,” he tells Liam. “None of it, Li.”

Beside him, Liam pushes up on one elbow. He looks down at Zayn for a long moment, then picks up his arm, presses a kiss to the inside of Zayn’s wrist, the top of his tattoo. Then he lies back down, lifts his arm so Zayn can wriggle under it, drape his arm over Liam’s waist. They lie there for a long time. Zayn feels the stir of Liam’s breath when he finally speaks.

“Do you think we should get a hammock?”

“Yeah,” says Zayn. He turns his face into Liam’s throat. “Yeah, why not?”

He’s almost expecting Liam to jump, the universe proving a point, but he stays, and stays, and stays.

***

_September 1999 - Liam is 30, Zayn is 6_  


He’s at Zayn’s again, the grass of the field damp under the soles of his feet – Zayn’ll be annoyed he’s gone, they were in the studio, but this is it, it’s the last date on the list.

There’s a pile of clothes by the rusty goalpost – an oil-stained t-shirt that must have been Zayn’s dad’s, a pair of joggers. There’s a two-finger Kit-Kat, too, and half a samosa wrapped in a bit of kitchen roll. Liam gets dressed, eats the samosa, pockets the Kit-Kat.

Zayn is swinging on the back gate, still in his school uniform and so so small, god.

“Thanks for the clothes,” Liam says when he gets near, “and the food. Your mum’s samosas are really good.”

“You look different.” Zayn’s dark eyes are wary – good for being out in the world and all its stranger danger, Liam thinks; Liam sort of wants to high-five him.

“Yeah, my hair changes a bit,” Liam says. “Because I’m coming from all different times. Like right now I’m thirty and when you saw me before I was, um, twenty-five, I think. But I’ve always got this birthmark, see?” He tips his head back, taps his throat. “You’ll always be able to tell it’s me.”

Zayn nods at that, and Liam decides to give him a minute. He sits down in the alley with his back to the fence, looking out at the field. It’s the last time he’ll ever get to look at it like this; Zayn’s family have long since moved into the house Zayn bought them, he can’t just be coming back to Bradford to lean against some random person’s back fence and stare at a field. Oh, god, he’s not going to freak Zayn out by crying now, that would be really weird. He can cry when he gets home.

“I didn’t know if you were really gonna come back,” Zayn says eventually. He shrugs when Liam looks up at him, like he’s still not sure.

“But you left the clothes out for me anyway,” Liam says gently.

“Cos you looked silly in the coat,” Zayn says, and smiles at the cobbles. He comes to sit against the fence with Liam, still a bit cautious. Liam is almost definitely not going to cry.

“Well, thank you very much,” Liam says, and Zayn says, “It’s alright.”

“Do you remember last time, I told you to bring something to write with?” 

Zayn nods, and Liam says, “Have you got it?” Zayn nods again, takes a pencil and an exercise book out of his bookbag. “Great,” says Liam. “We’re gonna do a list.”

He flips to the middle of the book and carefully pulls out the blank centre pages; he tries not to laugh at how wide Zayn’s eyes go at that, like he’s doing something terrible, mucking up a schoolbook.

“It’s a list of dates,” Liam says. “All the days I’m going to come and see you.” It’s a long list, but he knows it off by heart. “Do you want to write it?”

Zayn nods and takes the paper; Liam can see him taking it in, taking his time as he works it over in his head. It never gets old, this: how much Zayn is always himself.

“Should I put it as numbers?” Zayn says, frowning a bit, and Liam tells him, “You can write it however you like.”

“And,” Zayn says, looking up at him, pencil poised over the paper. “We’ll have adventures?”

“Yeah,” says Liam, grinning big and true with all the love he has in him. “Biggest adventure of my life, I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Again, please do go and look at [the things comradeocean made](http://comradeocean.tumblr.com/post/76419618301/1dbigbang-liam-zayn-so-lets-say-ill-come-another), because they're really really lovely.
> 
> Inspired by Audrey Niffinger's The Time Traveler's Wife; the characters from the novel do exist in this universe and are referred to a few times, as is the book, which I vaguely repurposed as a creative non-fiction memoir. . . thing.
> 
> My boyband tumblr is [over here](http://pushedoverto1side.tumblr.com); the tag for this fic is [here](http://pushedoverto1side.tumblr.com/tagged/bigbang-tag) (it’s mostly childhood pictures and X Factor haircuts. GOOD TIMES).


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